Linked Clones defaulting to single ESXi Host

[virtualnoob2]

Hi All,

I am in the middle of a View PoC and I'm messing around with Linked Clones. I don't know if this is just how composer is designed but when I compose 3 VM's and they all default to one of my ESXi host in my 6box cluster (each box has 4GB RAM), it seems like the linked clones want to stay with there replica. This stinks because we wanted to be able to compose 20+ VMs to a lab for testing. I have a host in my cluster that dosen't even have any VM's running on it.. Anyway tips/help/advice is greatly appreciated

Thanks All

[mittim12]

Do you have DRS enabled on the cluster?   That should make sure the cluster is properly load balanced when the guest are running.   

[virtualnoob2]

Yes DRS is running, thing is it states it is imbalanced, although I cannot see a problem anywhere. DRS has worked before (its moved VMs around, even with the imbalanced message).. Also I've setup DRS groups for all my hosts and also played with certain groups the linked clones are in.. Thanks for the reply

[eeg3]

Do you have the network name the same on both hosts? If HostA has a VM Network named "LA Desktops" and HostB has one named "LA vDesktops" and the image is set to "LA vDesktops" then it will only be provisioned to HostB.

[virtualnoob2]

I believe every host has the same exact network name, you mean like in the networking properites right? Sorry I'm not in the lab anymore, but will verify tomororw. Thank You

[virtualnoob2]

Yeah Every host was named "VM Network" .. I am playing with a dvSwitch .. do you recommend using a distributed virtual switch in my case instead?

[npeter]

Try vmotion'ing one of these deployed vms and see if any error/warning is reported.

[virtualnoob2]

lol how exactly do I "vMotion" a VM ? Just move it to another Host while its on? Or is there a different way?

[npeter · Accepted solution]

Yes, right click on a VM, select Migrate-> select change host->  Select a different host from the same cluster-> select a priority  and finish.

Alternatively you can drag and drop a poweredOn vm to another esx host in the same cluster.

-noble

[virtualnoob2]

ahh , thank you for that refresher..