Move Virtual Machine to Another Default Host

[Sunstealer]

We are just getting our feet wet with Vmware's HA feature. We have one cluster of two HP BL460 blades connected to an EVA4400 SAN. When initially configuring the virtual machines, I accidentally assigned them all to only one host in the cluster. It is easy to migrate to the other host, but it does not seem to stay that way. Once the VMs are shut down, they go back to the original host as the default. Is there an easy way to fix this? On the initial creation of a VM, it asks you which host. There does not seem to be an option to change it later though unless I am just missing something.

Thanks.

[Troy_Clavell]

If you have DRS, just enable that, set it to fully automated (maybe 3 star recommendations) and let DRS load balance your cluster.

[Sunstealer]

We have Standard, not Enterprise.

[Troy_Clavell]

so, you have HA and vMotion but no DRS? If you don't have DRS, you will have to load balance your cluster manually.

Hopefully I'm understanding your question.

[Sunstealer]

We have HA, but not DRS and VMotion since they are only included in the Enterprise version.

I am not really trying to load balance, just change the default host of two virtual machines. One host is running Windows VMs and one is running Netware VMs. As it stands right now, all the VMs default to running on only one host. To use the second host, I have to stop the VMs and migrate them to the other host. My problem is that only seems to affect the current running status. If I shut down the VMs and reboot the hosts, they all default back to launching on the first host. rather than using the startup settings that I configured on each host.

[Troy_Clavell]

It is easy to migrate to the other host, but it does not seem to stay that way.

When you said the above statement, I assumed you had vMotion. I know it used to be possible in the earlier release; pre V13 you could click on a host and deploy from template, now you can't.

Typically DRS helps in determining where the new VM should go, but if you don't have DRS, it will choose the first one in the cluster.

[Sunstealer]

So, without DRS, I have to manually change which host a VM will start on every time? Seems like kind of a bug or missing feature to me. Our plan was for the Windows host to be a backup for the Netware host and vice versa. I guess I could just as easily remove the hosts from the cluster and just move the VMs manually if one of the hosts ever dies. That would be a lot less likely situation than having to manually switch them around each time something is rebooted.

[LWilliams55]

Hmmm .. you could

try this...

Go into the cluster settings and disable the HA (just uncheck the box and apply it). It should remove the HA config.

Then go back in and power on your VMs to the correct hosts.

When your done try enabling HA again on the cluster.

[M0n7y]

I hope you have managed to sort this out by now.

If I understand what you are trying to do.

I assume you have got the same data stores presented to both ESX hosts?

Have you setup a vmotion network. This will allow you to manually move machines between the ESX hosts while the boxes are still up.

[DemohVIQ]

We have a similar setup and we figured out how to move VMs (not running) to different hosts because we only have the basic version that comes with HA. No vMotion or anything else.

Under Hosts and Clusters you have the VM. Just click and drag the VM to the proper host and the Migrate Virtual Machine wizard will pop up, just select to keep the VM config and disks in their current location.

[weinstein5]

Yes you will have to do it manually - easiest way is via cold migration - power down the vm - remove it form the first esx host - from the second esx host use the datastore browser and register the vms configuration file (.vmx) on the second host

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