Solved: Re: Is there a correct way to shutdown and restart...

Rapiscan · ‎09-27-2011

I must be doing something wrong here. What is the correct way to shutdown?

My VMware set configuration:

4x R710 server (Hosts)

4x 6248 Switches

1x MD3000i SAN

1x 2950 vCenter

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4x Guest OS

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ESX 4.0.0 U3

Here are the steps I did to shutdown entire set.

Shutdown all the Guest OS
Turn Off the FT of VMs
Enter the Mainteinance Mode on all Hosts
Right click on each Host (R710) and select Shutdown
Shutdown the vCenter
Wait for 5 minutes, and then Power off the SAN (MD3000i)
Power Off the four switches

To restart the VMware set, I did the following:

Powered On the four switches (wait for 2 minutes to go to next step)
Powered On the SAN (wait for 5 minutes to go to next step)
Powered On the vCenter
Opened the Dell Disk Storage Manager to see if the SAN is on Optimal Status
Powered On the Hosts (R710)
Go to vCenter
the four hosts are having yellow dots. Something about HA agent is disabled.
The I had to uncheck the HA checkbox, and then re-checked to let the system to reconfigure the HA and put the four hosts to normal status and ready to be used.
Turn On all the FT on each VM
Powered On the Guest OS

The second issue here is the Host time, I went to Time Configuration and the Time & Date is wrong. It was 4 hours off. The time is set to sync with my DNS server. Where did the hosts get this 4 hours difference?

PduPreez · ‎09-30-2011

In Summary

To fix both issues you need to do the following

1. Seeing your VC is already a DNS server, set the ESXi Hosts to use the VC as their Primary DNS, and the Virtual as secondary.

2. Setup your VC as a NTP server as well and point the hosts to use it.

If you want to edit the host file you need to put IP, hostname, FQDN

Example:

10.10.10.10 Esxihost01 Esxihost01.domain.com

But rather use DNS

Please don't forget to award points

View solution in original post

Mohdasifbabu · ‎09-27-2011

Mohd @sif B@bu

PduPreez · ‎09-28-2011

Hi

The process you are following seems correct but here are some things that comes to mind

HA - Issue

1. Is your DNS server physical or virtual. HA is very much dependant on DNS

- If DNS is a Virtual machine, you can edit the vCenter host file with the ESX host entries as a workaround

2. Your Gateway, is this available during Host power on

Time issue

1. Again is your DNS/NTP server physical or virtual

2. The 4 hour difrence could be picked up from the system time editable in the BIOS

Please award points if this is helpful/correct

Rapiscan · ‎09-28-2011

No, the primary DNS is in Virtual, the NTP server IP is the primary DNS server IP. I checked the R710 BIOS, the Time & Date are set to local time, matching with Windows DNS server time. If I leave the Hosts running the time will be almost matching with DNS server time, there is a delay of 40 seconds to a minutes. I do not know why this is happening. The 4 hours off only happens if I shutdown the entire VMware system.

The only physical server is the vCenter, it is also secondary DNS server. It syncs well with virtual primary DNS server. I do not have default gateway set.

You mentioned editing vcenter host file, are you refering to Windows hosts file?

Thanks for replying the post.

Johnny

PduPreez · ‎09-28-2011

The fact that DNS is Virtual, means the ESXi Hosts boots without a DNS/NTP server up and running.

Issue 1:

Yes I am referring to the Windows Hostfile to be edited with the ESXi entries

But seeing your Vcenter is also a DNS server, you can point your hosts to this address as primary.

HA polls the default gateway to determine if it is isolated or not, so you need to specify a gateway on the management network. (this will solve the problem)

Issue 2:

ESXi always runs UTC timezone until it can sync with a NTP server. So you might need to create a physical NTP server or use a Online NTP server id your hosts got Internet access. So making Vcenter a NTP server might be a wise plan

Please award points for all correct/helpful answers :smileycool:

Rapiscan · ‎09-29-2011