ESXi and HA on Workstation 7.1.1

[tmancini]

I have a couple of ESXi servers installed with an Openfiler SAN. Everything seems to work except HA. Getting insufficient resource errors and unable to contact a primary HA agent. Tried pretty much everything to get this to work. DNS seems fine as well.

Just wondered if this was just an impossibility with Workstation or if anyone has been able to enable and test HA on Workstation.

Thanks.

[a_p_]

I don't see a reason why HA should not work on VMware Workstation.

In my opinion this is more an issue about HA admission control. see http://www.yellow-bricks.com/vmware-high-availability-deepdiv/

If this doesn't help, please provide some more info on your environment and configuration.

André

[tmancini]

Not sure how this got posted. Please refer to the next post.

[tmancini]

André, thanks for your response.

I've been persuing this issue for a while now and familiar with many of the issues. Unfortunately, I have yet to discover anyone that has this running on Workstation.

I have a Dell laptop with 8GB of memory. Here's the rundown with the latest vSphere versions.

- Windows 2008 Standard x64 with MS-SQL 2008 Standard x64

- Windows 2008 Standard x64 with vCenter and Microsoft DNS.

- Openfiler iSCSI SAN

- 2-ESXi servers 4.1 servers. Even tried 4.0 without success.

I have tried using custom network configurations and reinstall with default vSwitches and neither seems to want to work. It's either something I'm completely missing or it's just not possible to run under these conditions.

[a_p_]

I don't have this configuration running here. My test setup is based on an ESXi4 host on which I run an AD DC (DHCP/DNS), vCenter Server, 2 ESX4 hosts... However this should work the same way.

Getting insufficient resource errors and unable to contact a primary HA agent

Even though you said DNS should be fine, can you confirm that all systems (vCenter and the hosts) can all ping each other using their FQDN names?

André

[lnxgeek · Accepted solution]

How much RAM have you given the ESXi hosts?

I struggled some time because I only gave it 2GB when it needed 3GB.

[tmancini]

lnxgeek, that was it!!! The minimum memory was the issue! I thought I was crazy with the wierd errors it was getting.

Thank you for posting the suggestion.

André, thank for your help as well, much appreciated.

Wonder why the minimum does not work. I may run this by a rep out of curiosity.

[lnxgeek]

No problem ;ø)

I was reading up to VCP and battled a bit with getting HA working. All other things worked except that. When going through the course material it said 2GB, but that was ESX version, ESXi requires 3GB. So the "i" east 1GB it seems ;ø)

[tmancini]

Just an FYI for those interested.

2GB is the minimum memory requirement for ESXi. 3GB minimum if using vCenter.

From the ESXi Installable and vCenter Server Setup Guide - http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r41/vsp_41_esxi_i_vc_setup_guide.pdf

2GB RAM minimum. For upgrades, 3GB RAM is required if the ESXi host is managed by vCenter Server.