VMware HA error on vSphere and ESX 4.0

[adeelleo]

I am having trouble enabling HA on the new ESXi 4 and vSphere 4

environment on my IBM BaldeCenter S environment. Everything was working

perfect untill i activated DPM on aggressive mode. DPM powered down all

hosts except one ruuning all the VM's. Now since then the HA agent is

not configuring properly.

I receive the following errors when i try to enable HA on the cluster.

HA agent has an error : cmd addnode failed for

secondary node: Internal AAM Error - agent could

not start. : Unknown HA error

error

5/27/2009 1:59:51 PM

Administrator

HA agent has an error : Cannot complete the HA

configuration

error

5/27/2009 1:59:51 PM

Administrator

I have tried everything from disabling and re-enabling HA, Creating a

new cluste and DataCenter, entering hosts in maintainance mode and then

exiting, disconecting the hosts and removing then re-adding, installing

frest ESXi and vCenter servers, changing network parameters,

reconfiguring for HA.

I have manually edited the host file and entered the entries for all

esx hosts. All esx hosts and vCenter can ping each other through IP,

FQDN and short names.

Any help would be highly appretiated. I am totally out of options.

Best regards,

Adeel Akram

[adeelleo]

This time the issue was resolved by disabling and then Enabling HA and DRS one at a time.

When i try to enable HA and DRS both at the same time i receive the same error. But if i only enable HA it completes without an issue and then i enable DRS which also happens without an issue.

Strange things happen with HA in ESX.

Best regards,

Adeel Akram

[depping]

Never heard of this issue before. Thanks for the feedback.

Duncan

VMware Communities User Moderator | VCP | VCDX

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[bandrews]

I'm having the exact same problem but you're solution isn't working for me.

[samaga]

I'm also having the same issue in VMWare HA...

I tried enabling HA & DRS 1 at a time... but no luck....

Can 2 hosts at different location be setup in a cluster??? Both hosts are having different DNS & Gateway.. but at same time can ping each others Gateway.

Regards,

SAMIR

[adeelleo]

have you manually edited the /etc/hosts file on the esx server an entered the IP, FQDN and Short names of all the ESX Servers and vSphere Servers?

10.10.10.1 corpesx01.DOM.LOC corpesx01

10.10.10.2 corpesx02.DOM.LOC corpesx02

10.10.10.3 corpesx03.DOM.LOC corpesx03

You need to do the same on the vSphere host and edite the following file with IP,FQDN and Short names of all ESX hosts and vSphere.

%SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

10.10.10.1 corpesx01.DOM.LOC corpesx01

10.10.10.2 corpesx02.DOM.LOC corpesx02

10.10.10.3 corpesx03.DOM.LOC corpesx03

You need to make sure that all hosts can ping each other through IP, FQDN and Short names.

Best regards,

Adeel Akram

[adeelleo]

Did you have a working ESX HA cluster and then you had this error or were you never able to configure HA?

Can the hosts ping each other through IP, FQDN and short names?

How did the problem occur?

Best regards,

Adeel Akram

[gh0stw4lk]

Hi Adeel,

do I add the IP address of the servers on the vmotion subnet? My hosts are connected to a management network, production network and vmotion network, so i don't want to add the wrong info to the hosts file.

Thanks

Dan

[adeelleo]

You need to Add the Management Network IP, FQDN and short name to the hosts file on ESXi hosts as well as the vCenter machine.

Best regards,

Adeel Akram

[Joshua_Mally]

HA issues means... check name resolution 100 times.... all my HA problems were circled around it.

Here is the best white paper i found till now on HA issues troublesho

+If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!! +

-Josh

Trying to learn

[NCSECU-CFV]

Josh,

Can you include a link for the white paper? I am having difficulty with HA after an upgrade to vCenter while using ESX3.5.

--UPDATE --

I manually changed the FT_HOSTS file to include all of my hosts in the cluster. This seems to have resolved my issue. Why? No clue. One of the hosts in the cluster would not appear in this list on two of the hosts, so I add it to the two of the hosts in the cluster. Once this was done, I "Reconfigured HA" on the server that was having an issue. The server joined happy as can be.

Thanks,

Christian

Message was edited by: NCSECU-CFV

[Joshua_Mally]

Oppps... not sure how i missed the link....

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

-Josh

Trying to learn

[rstrohmh]

Hey all,

Just adding my $.02, was having vague erorrs when trying to configure HA on a pair of hosts. Adding both hosts and VCenter to the hosts files on each machine cleared it up immediately.

Thanks for the tip!

[MSCChile]

Ok, I have 4 servers (all the same) and 2 have this problem.

Any Ideas?

Thanks

Geroge.

From the Captain's Chair

[depping]

AVOID USING HOST FILES!

Having a proper DNS set up is the way to go. Host files are too static and chances of human errors only increase.

Duncan

VMware Communities User Moderator | VCDX

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