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tscooter
Contributor
Contributor

Insufficient resources to satisfy configured failover level for ha

Hi,

when I reserve any amount of Memory to a VM I get the this error message: Insufficient resources to satisfy configured failover level for HA.

This is the first time I tried to configure "reserve memory" for a VM.

Running ESXi 4.0, 3 hosts, 27 VM:

CPU

-Total: 46905 MHz

-Reserved: 15616 MHz

-Available: 31289 MHz

Memory

-Total: 130451 MB

-Reserved: 16704,10 MB

-Available: 113746,90 MB

Why is this error occuring and how to troubleshoot / solve?

Thomas

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athlon_crazy
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Could be the slot size (largest VMs cpu & memory reservation configured) available when number of hosts failure equal to zero or none.






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etsahi
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

hi

what it means as i understand it that you "over booked" your memory so when you are migrating from one esx to another he cannt reserve enough memory to transfer the vm. you have "promissed" the guest a certain amount of resources and he cannt move if he wont get it.

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tscooter
Contributor
Contributor

Slot size?, I'm new to VMware can you explain this futher?

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tscooter
Contributor
Contributor

There is over 100GB of ram available total, about 30GB / host.

I've created 1 VM that I reserved 4GB to so there should be enough of memory on every host.

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JimKnopf99
Commander
Commander

When you select the Host Failures Cluster Tolerates admission control policy, the Advanced Runtime Info

link appears in the VMware HA section of the cluster's Summary tab in the vSphere Client. Click this link to

display the following information about the cluster:

  • Slot size.

  • Total slots in cluster. The sum of the slots supported by the good hosts in the cluster.

  • Used slots. The number of slots assigned to powered-on virtual machines. It can be more than the number

of powered-on virtual machines if you have defined an upper bound for the slot size using the advanced

options

  • Available slots. The number of slots available to power on additional virtual machines in the cluster.

VMware HA automatically reserves the required number of slots for failover. The remaining slots are

available to power on new virtual machines.

  • Total powered on VMs in cluster.

  • Total hosts in cluster.

  • Total good hosts in cluster. The number of hosts that are connected, not in maintenance mode, and have

no VMware HA errors.

  • Slot size.

  • Total slots in cluster. The sum of the slots supported by the good hosts in the cluster.

  • Used slots. The number of slots assigned to powered-on virtual machines. It can be more than the number

of powered-on virtual machines if you have defined an upper bound for the slot size using the advanced

options

  • Available slots. The number of slots available to power on additional virtual machines in the cluster.

VMware HA automatically reserves the required number of slots for failover. The remaining slots are

available to power on new virtual machines.

  • Total powered on VMs in cluster.

  • Total hosts in cluster.

  • Total good hosts in cluster. The number of hosts that are connected, not in maintenance mode, and have

no VMware HA errors.

Read this Manual. vSphere Availability Guide

Frank

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".
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athlon_crazy
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

But how many VMs currently power on and what is the value of "Current Failover Capacity" you get from Cluster summary tab?






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tscooter
Contributor
Contributor

This is our HA Advanced Runtime Info:

Slot size 256 MHz , 4 Virtual CPUs, 221 MB

Total slots in cluster: 183

Used slots: 23

Available slots: 99

Total powerd on vms in cluster: 23

Total hosts in cluster: 3

Total good hosts in cluster: 3

Do you see anything wrong there?

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tscooter
Contributor
Contributor

23 powered on VM's

Current Failover Capacity: 2 hosts

Current Failover Capacity: 1 host

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athlon_crazy
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

99 slots available is based on (Slot size 256 MHz , 4 Virtual CPUs, 221 MB) but when you do memory reservation the memory slot should based on 4GB instead 221MB. I doubt number of slot available & Current Failover Capacity will remain the same as previous.






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tscooter
Contributor
Contributor

Okay, so how can I reconfigure the memory slot to a larger value?

Like this?

Procedure

1 In the cluster’s Settings dialog box, select VMware HA.

2 Click the Advanced Options button to open the Advanced Options (HA) dialog box.

3 Enter each advanced attribute you want to change in a text box in the Option column and enter a value

in the Value column.

4 Click OK.

The cluster uses options

Option: das.slotMemInMB

Vvalue: 4096 MB

Can this be done on the fly, will it interfere with the running hosts/vm?

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athlon_crazy
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

You can configure memory slot larger as you want as long the number of slot available at least match or bigger than number of VMs running / power on. Otherwise, you will still getting the error.






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tscooter
Contributor
Contributor

Okay, but how do I configure the memory slot? Like I describe in above post? Can I do it on a running Cluster, will it interfere with any host/vm:s?

Or can I set this setting on only the VM not the whole Cluster?

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athlon_crazy
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Yes you can define this successfully to running cluster using advance setting. However, this can lead you to another issue and you may not able to power on all your VMs due to number of slot available per ESX hosts will be ignored.

Have you try disable admission control?






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tscooter
Contributor
Contributor

I rather not want to disable admission control.

So if I change the memory setting and vmware calculates that there is not enough slots for the running vm's will it then shutdown some of the vm's?

Or can I change the setting, try powering on a shutdown vm and see if it will power on or not.

Thomas

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

Thomas,

you may want to read Yellow-Bricks - HA Deepdive for a detailed explanation of HA, slot sizes, admission control...

André

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tscooter
Contributor
Contributor

Good article..

So does this mean that if I configure das.slotMemInMB to 4096MB (1 HA host failover) then available slots will be calculated HOST Total memory divided by 4096?

Thomas

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