VM autostartup with vsphere HA 5.1

[sweehan]

Hi,

My site have 2 ESXi5.1 host configured with HA cluster. The host and Virtual Machine shutdown is control by UPS when ever there is a power failure. The Auto startup / shutdown was disable when HA is enable.

I want to asked if the I enable the auto startup / shutdown feature, will the Virtual Machine startup automatically after both host power up?

[JCMorrissey]

it should do but pls bear in mind its not supported to do so

see pg 25 of

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-51/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-51-availab...

[laurantnx]

This doesn't make any sense. What if the whole cluster goes offline due to a power outage for example?

[Sundararajan]

Don't understand your issue, explain clearly.

[julienvarela]

Hi,

you need to configure the virtual Machine Startup and shutdown option through your ESX. Please see my screenshot bottom. HA will not restart your VMs because it is a gracefull shutdown.

Regards,

Julien.

[ShadyMalatawey]

Hi...

According to Post, vSphere 5.0 remebers the last state of VMs, so in case of entire-cluster Power outage, vSphere will start VMs accordingly to their last state.
Need to be verified in the Lab...
Check this too.. verified by one of the masters of HA in the world, Duncan Epping..

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/vmware-high-availability-deepdiv/

Check the (All Hosts Down Section)

[laurantnx]

Thanks everyone for your responses. That makes sense. I found Duncan's post after I posted... should have done some more research first. Will need to check this in my lab. Thanks again!

[depping]

laurantnx wrote:

Thanks everyone for your responses. That makes sense. I found Duncan's post after I posted... should have done some more research first. Will need to check this in my lab. Thanks again!

If you power-off all your VMs nothing will be restarted automatically, if all hosts fail and as such all VMs then they will be restarted.

Agreed that this is a major pain point and I filed a feature request for this a long time ago. Will check to see what the status is,