Can you power on VMs that were offline if a host that is part of a cluster is not able to power on?

[JonBelanger2011]

Hey guys,

I know this sounds like a weird question but let me explain....

We are doing a major power off in our serveur room over the weekend for some power maintenance.

All our VMs will be powered off, including vCenter which will be powered off last.  Next, all the hosts will be powered off as well.

In the event that one of the host does NOT power on.  Will I be able to power on the VMs that were residing on the dead host?

I know this is unlikely but not impossible and I would like to be prepared for it.

Edit : I have tested it in the lab and the VMs still show up in vCenter as disconnected and Migrate/V-Motion is still avaible.  I was able to move the VMs to a functionnal host.  Now I am just wondering if the VMs will still show as disconnected if vCenter is restarted.  Can anyone confirm?

Thanks!

[JPM300]

Yes you will be able to.

What will happen is if a host dies and does not come back the VM's that was on that host may go into an orphaned state.  You would just right click on the VM and remove from inventory.  Then on a host that is active you would browse the datastore where that VM lives and right click on the .vmx file and go Add to Inventory.  The VM will then show up on the other host and you can start it up.

[rcporto]

If the dead host is part of a HA cluster and VMs residing in shared storage do you will can power on the VMs... and if host are not part of a cluster but VMs are on shared storage, if they still appear as Disconnected, you can remove the VM from inventory and re-add the VM on another host.

[JonBelanger2011]

What will happen is if a host dies and does not come back the VM's that was on that host may go into an orphaned state. 

I tested this in a lab and the VM show up as disconnected.  I was able to migrate them do another host no problem.  Will the VMs still show up (as disconnected) if vCenter is restarted?

You would just right click on the VM and remove from inventory.  Then on a host that is active you would browse the datastore where that VM lives and right click on the .vmx file and go Add to Inventory.  The VM will then show up on the other host and you can start it up.

That was also something I had in mind if the VMs on the dead host do not show up in the inventory.

Thanks for your reply

[JonBelanger2011]

Richardson Porto wrote:

If the dead host is part of a HA cluster and VMs residing in shared storage do you will can power on the VMs... and if host are not part of a cluster but VMs are on shared storage, if they still appear as Disconnected, you can remove the VM from inventory and re-add the VM on another host.

The dead host is part of a HA cluster but all the VMs will be powered off.  It is my understanding that HA will power on VMs that were powered on prior to an outage, which is not the case in this scenario.