Host Isolation Response/ iSCSI connectivity loss - what if scenario

[TxTechLaw]

The other thread on automatic shutdown got me thinking about our setup:

1. When our building loses power, we lose cooling and networking, but our servers/UPS systems will stay on, as they are connected to a backup generator.

2. Yah, so, that's not good, cooling is lost, and servers are getting heated up, so we need to start shutting them down until cooling has been restored.

Our 2 ESX systems connect to our SAN via iSCSI -- with power lost, the SAN and the ESX servers are no longer talking, so I'm thinking that powering down our ESX servers, until cooling has been restored, should have no negative consequences on the virtual machines, correct?

With the networking\iSCSI connection lost between the ESX servers and the SAN, what state will our mostly Windows virtual machines be in? Will they be trashed? Or does ESX have some sort of checking in place for this type of condition?

In our current situation, what would the recommended Host Isolation Response setting be?

Thank you for any insight,

Chad

[weinstein5 · Accepted solution]

Our 2 ESX systems connect to our SAN via iSCSI -- with power lost, the SAN and the ESX servers are no longer talking, so I'm thinking that powering down our ESX servers, until cooling has been restored, should have no negative consequences on the virtual machines, correct?

It should not - but it will all depend on wht the VM, operating system and appplication were doing at the time of the crash -

With the networking\iSCSI connection lost between the ESX servers and the SAN, what state will our mostly Windows virtual machines be in? Will they be trashed? Or does ESX have some sort of checking in place for this type of condition?

ESX does not check for this condition - since your VMs are on the iSCSI SAN you will find them crashed -

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