Creating a DRS and HA Cluster

[ZenJon]

Long time reader, first time poster!

I am preparing to cluster 3 ESX servers and I have read all of the how-to's and think I understand the requirements. Two of my servers have a few test VMs on local storage and due to being tight on shared space, I'm wondering if I can just leave those VMs on local storage and leave them out of the cluster. From what I have read, it appears that when I add a host to a HA/DRS cluster all of the VMs on said host will be added to the cluster as well. At which point I'm guessing it will fail in my scenario because of the few locally stored VMs.

Any advice here is much appreciated!

[VirtualNoitall]

Hello,

I haven't had the same scenario come up but I think they just won't migrate via DRS or benefit from HA.

[Texiwill]

Hello,

I have had that situation and the ESX server will join the cluster but as VirtualNoitall states it is not possible for DRS or HA to work on those VMs.

Best regards,

Edward

[ZenJon]

Well just to follow up, I created the cluster and added all three hosts and there were no errors or alarms. Oddly enough the VMs that are on local storage show up visually under the cluster in VCM as if they are part of the cluster, but I realize that they will not enjoy the DRS/HA benefits. On the summary tab of the cluster the "Number of Virtual Machines" is the sum of my VMs minus the number of locally stored VMs. At least I didn't have any VMs shutdown on me or otherwise complain about what I did.

Thanks for the help!