Hi, we have two ESX 3.5 host with some vms on local datastore each one, besides every host has a lot of vms on local datastores.
Some vms have a big vmdk and a this time i can't stop them.
The question is, can i put the two hosts into an HA cluster and at same time leave these vms on local datastore?
Obviously without the guarantees of the HA for these VMs.
Reagads
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Marco
Yes, you can add a host that has VMs on a local datastore to an HA cluster. As you said, those VMs will not be able to restart on another host during an HA failover.
Yes, you can add a host that has VMs on a local datastore to an HA cluster. As you said, those VMs will not be able to restart on another host during an HA failover.
Remember Shared Storage is a requirement for HA.
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vmware_ha_wp.pdf
If you have hosts that have local storage, better to just leave them standalone. There really isn't any benefit in putting them in a cluster.
You could add these hosts into an HA cluster, but the VMs will not be able to have HA failover, as they are not on shared storage -
You will get alerts when configuring HA though, so ity is not a tidy solution
LeftHand Networks is working on a solution to this that will aloow acess.
Alterbnatively . . you could use something like openfiler or freenas to make the Local storage networek accesible (if this is only for testing purposes)
Configuring HA should not be a problem, but would you gain anything out of it??
HA would only work for those VMs which sit on shared storage (accessed by both hosts)
I would suggest if you really want HA to protect your VMs use shared storage otherwise it would just be a feature enabled without much use.
Hope this helps!!