We recently had a power failure that outlasted our UPS batteries. When we regained powered, the SAN and the ESX hosts came up ok, but then none of the VMs powered on. Is there some setting to tell the VMs to power on after a power failure? I know the VMs have a bios, but I can imagine that it would get time consuming to manually adjust settings in every VMs bios. Does anyone have any suggestions on the best methods for automatic recovery from a power failure? Thanks.
Are you running Virtual Center? if you are, you can click on the host, then click on the Configure tab. Under "Software" it's listed as "virtual Machine Startup / Shutdown". You have to manually set it for each VM. It's disabled by default. This is one of those steps I always forget when creating a VM. in version 2.5, it the auto restart used to be a check box during VM creation. i don't know why they dumped it.
Also, you've got to re-check this setting every so often. if a VM is on host 1 and you set it to auto-start, if DRS moves it to host 2, auto-start is now off.
Are you running Virtual Center? if you are, you can click on the host, then click on the Configure tab. Under "Software" it's listed as "virtual Machine Startup / Shutdown". You have to manually set it for each VM. It's disabled by default. This is one of those steps I always forget when creating a VM. in version 2.5, it the auto restart used to be a check box during VM creation. i don't know why they dumped it.
Also, you've got to re-check this setting every so often. if a VM is on host 1 and you set it to auto-start, if DRS moves it to host 2, auto-start is now off.
I discovered this shortly after posting, just looking for it. I agree that it is odd they would go from an individual VM setting to a host dependent setting. It almost defeats the purpose of DRS if the VMs will not power up after being rearranged with DRS and then having a power failure. I guess I could set a rule that some VMs do not move at all in the DRS settings that way they could retain their power settings and power on order...
The thing that kills me is that you never know if VMs are going to power on or not. I had posted about these settings not "Sticking" a few months ago. Prompted by your post, I went to check the settings on my VMs. Auto start-up is disabled on all of them !!! If I had a host reboot, none of my VMs would have started back up.
Why bother even having the setting if DRS and Vmotion is going to disable it?
Ok, my VC VM is set to disabled ! I KNOW that I have specifically set that VM to auto start 3 times in the past. I'm opening a ticket !!!!
Let me know what they say. I definately do not want another morning like today.
After talking with Vware and showing them the issue, here is their response
"regarding the Virtual Machine startup/shutdown I just confirmed , after migrating the VM which had Auto settings in the source host , in destination it will default to Any Order , you have to manually move into Automatic order."
Let me explain that while i was working on the call with them we were able to duplicate the problem of setting a VM to have the highest startup prioity and having it revert back to any order when it was migrated to another host. This problem occured every time we tried it. We were not able to duplicate the problem of the VM reverting back to manual. I know this is happening because our VC server is virtual and I KNOW I have set it to auo startup several times. Right now, it's back on manual.
To me, this is unacceptable. There's a reason that you set a VM to be the highest priority startup on restart. Why even have that option if DRS is just going to put it back to any order?
I've got an idea. Do a screen shot of how all of your VMs are set for startup. Then, each time DRS moves a VM, go to that host and compare the settings to your screenshot. Then just reset the ones that have gone back to any order. That shouldn't be too difficult. Aparently that's what Vmware wants everyone to do.
Here is what I found regarding it switching them back to manual startup. I found that sometimes when I click on a host and look at its configuration, all of my VMs say manual startup, If I click on a different host and then go back the the frist host it shows them in the correct order. I am not sure if it is a bug or just me though. Let me know if this helps at all.
