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RockyHsu
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vSphere 4.1 & 5.0 HA function adjustment.

I use HA function at ESXi4.1 and ESXi5.0,and have some problem when I want to failover VMs to another Hosts.


Two Hosts with HA & DRS mode  p.s. Please check out the attachments for more detail.



1. I unplug all network cables on one host, so all VMs on this Host should failover to another Host,but it seems to not work. (please check HA-1.jpg) but if I change "Host Isolation Response" setting to power off or shutdown. All VMs will restart at another Host. It doesn't make a sense for me.Why doesn't it migrate online to other Host???



2. I don't setup mangement network redundancy,I want to migrate only one vm to another host when I unplug one network cable that has VM(Win2k8ViewClient) on this Vitual Machine network(vmnic1 from networking.jpg), does it failover automatically? or is it possible to do it? (please check HA-2.jpg)




Thanks to each VMware fanatic

Rocky



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FL0G
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No, it will not failover automatically. HA only kicks in if the entire host fails.

"VM Monitoring" is another feature. It monitors the virtual machine, using heartbeats from the VMware Tools. If heartbeats are not received for a specific time the vm will be rebooted. It does not failover the vm to another host. The idea behind VM Monitoring is to restart a VM if it encounters en software error. But many people i know don't use this feature, because it sometimes restart VMs without any reasons.

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FL0G
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Hello Rocky,

1. HA never migrates virtual machines. HA can only power on virtual machines on another host if one host failed. Additionally, vMotion requires network connection, so it is not possible to migrate the machine after removing the network cables. For that reason you could set the host isolation response to shutdown, so another host can boot the vm.

2. No it won't do it automatically. Maybe you could create an alarm with an action to power off the host, or migrate the machine. I have never heard of anything like this, but it should be possible.

RockyHsu
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Hi  Flog, you correct me some concept at HA function, thank you very much.

About question 2:  So you mean there is no way to  failover automatically. 

How does "VM Monitoring" work,does it mean VMs restart on same host through VMware tools,but it can't failover to other hosts,am I right?

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FL0G
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No, it will not failover automatically. HA only kicks in if the entire host fails.

"VM Monitoring" is another feature. It monitors the virtual machine, using heartbeats from the VMware Tools. If heartbeats are not received for a specific time the vm will be rebooted. It does not failover the vm to another host. The idea behind VM Monitoring is to restart a VM if it encounters en software error. But many people i know don't use this feature, because it sometimes restart VMs without any reasons.

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RockyHsu
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Hi Flog ,

I totally understand it! Thanks again!

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depping
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I do want to point out that besides the VMware Tools heartbeats VM Monitoring also looks at Network and Disk IO.

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