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SamiEMC
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Need to make VMs move and Power On the Other ESXi , HA and Power Configuration Questions

Dears

Need to make VMs move and Power On the Other ESXi using the HA and Power Options

So what Options I need to Enable and Disable :

Turn On Vsphere HA

Enable Host Monitoring

Admission Control ( Disabled )

VM Machine Options

VM restart Priority ( Medium )

Host Isolation response Power Off

VM Monitoring (Disabled )

Monitoring sensitivity ( High )

Data Store Heartbeat ( Select any of the Clusters datastores taking into account my preferences ) No one of the Datastore is ticked

On each :

Virtual Machine Startup/Shutdown is Disabled

Please advise about required Options and what about VMs we dont want to have powered on ?

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weinstein5
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Just to be clear VMware HA will only restart the VMs if the ESXi hosts fails - or if VM monitoring is enabled which will monitors VMs if they crash or hang and restart the affected VM -

and just to be clear the isolation response setting has nothing  to do whther HA will work or not - it will only come into play if the ESXi host becomes isolated from the HA Cluster -

xMotion only works between active ESXi hosts that can communicate to the vCenter server - so if the ESXi host is crashed or has become isolated then vMotion will not work.

vMotion is automated with DRS which will vMotion a VM needing more resources to an ESXi host with sufficient reosurces -

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weinstein5
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I assume you are referring ti HA - really the only thing you would need enable if HA on the cluster and take the defaults this will protect all the VMs in the cluster - if there are VMs you do not want to restart in the event of a host failure you can disable HA for those specific machines.

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SamiEMC
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Dear weinstin

What happened is that the Connectivity was gone to the ESXi2 but the VMs didnt migrate to the other ESXi in Cluster


I checked the HA Configuration , I am found the Option "Host Isolation" with "Leaved Powered on " which doesnt seem the default Option ( So VMs were online ) but didnt do vmotion

what I need is moving the VMs from failed ESXi ( Powered Off or no Network Connectivity ) to other ESXi and power on there

please advise

Thanks

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weinstein5
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The isolation respponse is how HA reponds to a host losing network - as you see it gives you two choices to either leave the VMs running or shut them down. If you have a sufficiently redundant network leaving them running will allow users to continue to access the VMs - Shutting them down will allow you to restart the vMs on another host.

HA does not consider loss of network connectivoty to a host as a failure so it does not failover the VMs and remember HA doe not utilize vMotion.

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SamiEMC
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So HA only works with power off ?

and why didnt VMs do vmotion when customer rebooted the ESXi2 even it should move ?

Vmotion works normally when ESXi' are up

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weinstein5
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Just to be clear VMware HA will only restart the VMs if the ESXi hosts fails - or if VM monitoring is enabled which will monitors VMs if they crash or hang and restart the affected VM -

and just to be clear the isolation response setting has nothing  to do whther HA will work or not - it will only come into play if the ESXi host becomes isolated from the HA Cluster -

xMotion only works between active ESXi hosts that can communicate to the vCenter server - so if the ESXi host is crashed or has become isolated then vMotion will not work.

vMotion is automated with DRS which will vMotion a VM needing more resources to an ESXi host with sufficient reosurces -

If you find this or any other answer useful please consider awarding points by marking the answer correct or helpful
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SamiEMC
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So how to do the following ?

We need the VMs to be moved to other ESXis in case Network was down or ESXi had a Power Failure

Please advise about all required settings

when we had ESXi powered off vms didnt move too ,

thanks

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depping
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Did you read the documentation? Everything you are asking is either mentioned in their or easy to find on google. But anyway this is how you need to set it up:

Turn On Vsphere HA --> ENABLE

Enable Host Monitoring --> ENABLE

Admission Control ( Disabled ) --> ENABLE

VM Machine Options --> Leave as is

VM restart Priority ( Medium ) --> Leave as is

Host Isolation response Power Off --> YES

VM Monitoring (Disabled ) --> Leave as is

Monitoring sensitivity ( High ) --> Leave as is

Data Store Heartbeat ( Select any of the Clusters datastores taking into account my preferences ) No one of the Datastore is ticked --> Leave as is

weinstein5
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ESXi fails - VMware HA will restart the VMs running on the failed host on the other hosts in the HA cluster

ESXi is powered off - since this is intiated by an administrator the VM will have to be placed in Maintenance mode requiring the VMs to migrated off or shut down before the host can be powered off -

Network failure - with a network failure the ESXi host become isolated from the HA Cluster - and you can configure what that node does in this situattion - either leave the VMs running which assumes that connectivity to the VMs is not affected or power the VMs down which will allow the VMs to be restarted on the remaining hosts in the cluster -

Follow Duncan's suggestions for your HA settings -

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NavalgundRaj
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Hi Duncan,

Thanks Duncan for reply on this and noted, these are ultimate basic HA and DRS Rules of Thumb,

These are ultimate thumb rule for VM and HA events.

Regards

Basavaraj.R Navalgund

Note: If you found this correct or answer useful please consider the use of the Correct buttons to award points. Regards Basavaraj.R Navalgund
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