Advice on creating Cluster from 2 standalone hosts

[house2k]

Hi there,

I am hoping to get a bit of advice on what I am trying to do.  First off I will explain our setup.

We have vCenter Server 4.0.0 and manage a variety of clusters and standalone hosts within this vCenter.  We have a couple of standalone hosts, that are also managed within this vCenter.  They are both running VMware ESXi 4.0.0.  Both hosts are identical hardware wise, and all VMs on both hosts are hosted on the same SAN. For some reason, when the environment was first setup, these were not configured as a cluster.

The licensing will allow us to cluster them, and a vMotion network is already configured on both hosts. I have tried migrating a VM from one host to another, but it failed saying there was no vMotion connection.  I will check the physical connection when I am next at the site.

I have very basic administration experience with VMware, so wanted to check on here to ensure I am thinking on the right track.

So after I have resolved the issue with the vMotion network, all I need to do is place both hosts into a cluster and hopefully it will work.  I can test by migrating machines.  Is there anything I need to check or avoid doing?  Both hosts contain critical servers, so I want to make sure I have covered everything before attempting any changes.

Thanks in advance

[house2k]

Sorry I should have mentioned, vMotion has already been configured on these hosts in the past, but I haven't checked the physical connection.

[jdptechnc · Accepted solution]

As long as the networking (vswitch network labels for your virtual machine networks, the vmk ports used for vMotion are both vMotion enabled and can communicate with each other) and storage are in common, you should be OK to go ahead and cluster the hosts.

[weinstein5]

and to add as long as you have confirmed the above - the hosts do not need to be in a cluster to vMotion - the only reason to place them into a cluster is if you have the need to enable EVC -

[house2k]

Thank you for the replies.  We basically just want to configure HA and DRS, so this is the reason for the cluster. 

That's great, looks straightforward