Local VMs and HA Cluster

[mciacci]

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

--

Marco

[casselc · Accepted solution]

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.

[zomx]

Sorry I do not believe you can use local storage for HA.

See here:

edit: nevermind, saw that you mentioned no true HA funtionality

[Troy_Clavell]

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.

[bulletprooffool]

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)

[savantsingh]

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!!