testing HA feature in ESXi 4.1 free version

[radityatirta]

Hi all,

i have 2 free version (trial) esxi 4.1 installed on : a VM Workstation located in the laptop, and bare on a host server DL380G7

i want to test some features like the HA high availability and automated / scheduled replication

i have only vsphere client 4.1. i dont think what i have is enough to see if the HA really worked between these two esxi

is there anything i miss ? perhaps the vcenter server?

[depping]

you will need vCenter Server to enable HA and to create a cluster.

I suggest download vSphere Enterprise and test that with a 60day license.

Duncan (VCDX)

Available now on Amazon: vSphere 4.1 HA and DRS technical deepdive

[idle-jam]

VMware HA you will need vsphere essential plus or vSphere Standard edition with vCenter foundation/standard. you can look into tools that does VM to VM replication like Veeam or Quest

[bulletprooffool]

HA requires the VC for setup, but once it is installed and configured, you are able to shut down the VC, without any issues as far as HA is concerned (though I am not sure what will happen to your HA confihg once your 60 day license dies?) The VC will need a SQL database and a 64 bit OS, so you're going to be putting heavy load on your laptop (2 x ESX hosts, a few VMs on those and a VC)

Either way, to test HA on a 1 laptop setup, you'll need to simulate Host failure.

good luck - let us know how it goes once you've set up the VC and are testing HA.

[bulletprooffool]

Also, have a look at the link Duncan posted above - really a good resource on HA.

[radityatirta]

to all,

thankyou for your quick response

and yes, im currently downloading veeam and the quest software, while for the vsphere enterprise method it seems i have to get a way around to get the trial license. i guess i;ll have to look for another 64 bit OS server in order to run the VCenter server

i'll be sure to post the progress again.

so i imagine the schema will be

in d laptop i have first VM runnning esxi (which has another vm in it) , second VM running 64bit OS server to run VCenter

then in the different physical server i already have esxi 4.1 running with another vm in it which is the duplicate from the first VM i mention before

[depping]

You can indeed always run vCenter as a VM.

Duncan (VCDX)

Available now on Amazon: vSphere 4.1 HA and DRS technical deepdive

[radityatirta]

to all,

so far i did make some settings on the vcenter server, activating vmHA, make cluster, add host the cluster, but then i received this alert:

insufficient resources to satisfy HA failover level on cluster ClusterHA

unable to contact a primary HA agent in cluster ClusterHA

[depping]

Do you have virtual machines with a reservation? If so remove the reservation, or simple disable Admission Control which is part of HA. But I would recommend to only do that for test purposes,

Duncan (VCDX)

Available now on Amazon: vSphere 4.1 HA and DRS technical deepdive

[radityatirta]

hi all

its been a while and i made some progress :

- try to use ESX 4.1 version instead ESXi to attach the host into cluster i made in vcenter server

- build iSCSI with openfiler ( i tried with freeNAS but hasnt worked)

- so the vmware HA agent is working with my following environtment: 2 host esx 4.1 , 1 vm to run the iscsi disk openfiler, 1vm as windows server 2008 so i can run vcenter server in it, then make the last vm guest OS winxp and install it on iscsi

- so i run a test to see vmware HA and vMotion working, and the result is success

- how do you test fault tolerance?

okey now i try to add another host esxi 4.1 just freshly configured with only ip static, gateways, dns and hostname, then attached it to the working cluster, and when the process gets into configuring HA it came with error that says cannot complete the HA configuration, unable to contact the a primary HA target

[depping]

First ensure that you have FT capable/supported processors. If that is the case you should just enable FT on a VMkernel or create a new VMkernel with FT enabled. After that just enable it on the VM.

All of this is very well documented by the way: http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vs_pages/vsp_pubs_esxi41_i_vc41.html

Duncan (VCDX)

Available now on Amazon: vSphere 4.1 HA and DRS technical deepdive