Configurinh DRS/HA

[zorro_rks]

Hi All,

I am pretty new for the HA / Clustering concepts I was trying to configure HA /DRS on my server. I have followed the document on the vmware site and ensured that the basic things are right like having similar server and a SAN storage box. I have installed the VCMS on a differnt server. As I have two esx 3.0.1 Server I have configured /etc/hosts and ensured that the host name is resolved from both the servers. But not sure why I get this errorr mentioned below when i configure cluster...

Error :

Unable to Contact a primary agent, in the cluster Clustername in LAB1

Error Detected on 10.20.1.181 in LAB1 in : ft_gethostbyname fails : gethostname(esx1) Failed .

Can some body help me on this, if you have any document which gives step by ste procedure of installing HA. Will be og help.

Thank you

Ravi

[ascari · Accepted solution]

Hi, in 95% of case this is a dns problem.

Please assures to you that your two esx system and vcms are correcltly in dns structure. (forward and reverse)

Configure your esx host for this dns and verify that yuou default gateway is ping responding (for isolation mode process)

Finally, create ha recipient in vcs and drag and drop inside your esx host (one by one)

/etc/host is an diffused used mode but it's not best practice. Anyway assures to you that in etc/host you have your two esx host and vcs ip.

Bye Alberto

[zorro_rks]

Hi Alberto,

You are right, i had made a mistake on one of the server. It was not able to resolve by its short name (with out the domain's sufix).I put the required detail in the /etc/hosts file. I got this info on one of the online document.

Thank you for the help.

(Clusters Enabled for HA

• For clusters enabled for HA, all virtual machines and their configuration files must reside on shared storage (typically a SAN), because you must be able to power on the virtual machine on any host in the cluster. This also means that the hosts must be configured to have access to the same virtual machine network and to other resources.

• Each host in an HA cluster must be able to resolve the host name and IP address of all other hosts in the cluster. To achieve this, you can either set up DNS on each host (preferred) or fill in the /etc/hosts entries manually (error prone and discouraged).

Note All hosts in an HA cluster must have DNS configured so that the short hostname (without the domain suffix) of any host in the cluster can be resolved to the appropriate IP address from any other host in the cluster. Otherwise, the Configuring HA task fails.

Cheers..

Ravi.