VMotion info

[conwacj1]

Dealing with a client that has 1 NIC per ESX, 2 ESX total. They want to set up VMotion. Is this something that can be done, sharing the VM Network, Service Console and VMotion all on the same NIC?

I set it up that way today, and removed an ESX server that had 2 VM's on it, it did not Migrate the running VM's to the ESX server that remained in VirtualCenter. Any thoughts?

[esiebert7625]

Yes it can be done, see this post...

Service Console and Vmotion NIC sharing - http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=146348𣮬

Fyi…if you find this post helpful, please award points using the Helpful/Correct buttons.

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Thanks, Eric

Visit my website: http://vmware-land.com

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[conwacj1]

That helps. but the problem remains that when I removed one of the ESX hosts from VC, the VM's on that host did not migrate. Any thoughts?

[esiebert7625]

You do have HA configured and enabled? Are your isolation responses set correctly for your VM's?

Automating High Availability (HA) Services with Vmware HA - http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vmware_ha_wp.pdf

Also see:

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=605107&#605107

[VirtualNoitall]

Hello,

Did you have a cluster setup? Was DRS and/or HA enabled?

[conwacj1]

Do not have HA setup. Will do that tomorrow. Does anyone have a link for documentation on how to setup HA on a step by step process?

The link http://www.vmware.com/pdfs/vmware_ha_wp.pdf was helpful, but vague.

[esiebert7625]

Check out this guide also...

http://www.vmware.com/pdfs/vi3_301_201_resource_mgmt.pdf

Some other good links...

Effective DRS and HA in Production - http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/tac9413.pdf

Resource Management with Vmware DRS - http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vmware_drs_wp.pdf

Resource Management in Vmware ESX Server 3 - http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/tac9726.pdf

Resource Management Guide - http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_301_201_resource_mgmt.pdf

Intel & AMD with HA & DRS - http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=526615

Choosing the HA host destination - http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=563006&#563006

Vmware HA with 2 ESX hosts - http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=605107&#605107

Autostart and HA - http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=76060

Knocking Out Downtime with Two Punches: VMotion & VMware HA - http://www.vmware-tsx.com/download.php?asset_id=45

A Practical Guide to HA - http://www.vmware-tsx.com/download.php?asset_id=29

Message was edited by:

esiebert7625

[Erik_Zandboer]

Just to make sure: Your client DOES have shared storage, right??

[conwacj1]

yes, shared storage. Do I setup HA virtually?

[Erik_Zandboer]

I do not understand what you want to accomplish. You talk about getting vmotion to work, and then you "remove one ESX host". That sounds like HA, and has nothing to do with vmotion (you don't even need the VMkernel/VMotion network in order to setup HA)

What do you want to accomplish; vmotion, drs, ha or any combination of these?

[conwacj1]

Receiving Configuration Issues error:

Insufficient resources to satisfy HA failovr level on cluster.

Unable to contact a primary HA agent in cluster.

[conwacj1]

Erik,

I was lead to believe that in order to setup VMotion, you needed to setup HA?

My main goal is to setup VMotion so if an ESX Host goes down, the VM's on that host will get pushed over to the other ESX Host in VirtualCenter.

[fcapizzo · Accepted solution]

conwacj1, if you remove a host from VirtualCenter, that's not going to start up those VMs on other hosts. In order to use VMotion/DRS/HA, you need to have at least 2 ESX hosts in the cluster, so you need to add that host back in to the cluster.

If you want to test VMotion, right-click on a running VM and select Migrate... . If you want to test HA, go power off (not shut down) an ESX host running a powered-on VM. You can also test HA by disconnecting the NIC used for Service Console.

Also, HA is not dependent upon VMotion at all. Though the shared storage requirement is still necessary for both to work, HA doesn't need VMkernel port groups set up in order to function.

Message was edited by:

fcapizzo

[Erik_Zandboer]

So I guess VMotion is not the problem after all. Off course wanting HA in a two server setup to work, you should make sure that both servers are not utilised above 50% (both CPU and memory load)

Also, I would NEVER recommend to activate HA on a system which has only a single console connection (loss of single switch will cause both hosts to power down all VMs etc)

[Erik_Zandboer]

Uhm... You are mixing up the different methods. If you want to protect from host failure, you should use HA, which does not rely on VMotion (how can you ever perform a "hot" migration from a failed host?)

If you want to be able to move VMs around the two hosts, you would use VMotion. On top of VMotion, you could decide to run DRS (which can move VM's around automagically to spread loads)