We have purchased ESX3.5 with DRS/HA for our Production Virtual Environment. Our VirtualCenter 2.5 has 3 Resource Groups (I believe that is what they are called) designed around CPU compatibility and vMotion. The first Resource Group only has 1 ESX3.5 host because it does not have CPU compatibility with any other host. It has 3 DR VMs (using PlateSpin Powerconvert 6.8.2 incremental conversions) working against its respective Production Physical servers. The second has 5 ESX3.5 hosts with over 50 VMs on all the various hosts. The third Resource Group has 2 ESX3.5 hosts and 15 VMs.
What I'd like to do is setup DRS/HA on each of the Resource Groups. With the exception of the first Resource Group (only has 1 ESX Host), I believe I need to cluster the hosts on Resource Group2 and Resource Group3 in its own clusters then activate HA/DRS. Is that correct?
I plan on just staying with the HA and DRS defaults for now.
Just need to be sure that what I am doing is correct and practical. Can anyone advise?
Thanks
What you're doing is fine.
I've seen plenty of configurations where there's an AMD cluster and an Intel cluster.
Chipset compatability for VMotion/DRS is essential so it's the best way to manage this.
You need to create three seperate clusters. Just right click the datacenter object to do this.
Once you've created the 3 clusters, right click them and edit settings to enable DRS & HA
so, I need to create a third cluster for the Resource Group that only has 1 host in it?
no need to create a HA/DRS cluster for a single host.
thanks very much. So, my thoughts to setup HA/DRS is a practical one? Is that what most folks do? What is the most common approach?
setting up a HA/DRS pool is the way to go. If gives you failover in the event of a HOST failure, as well as automated load balancing, etc....
Thanks very much. Certainly seemed like the thing to do. Is what I am going to do the configuration that is used often or do others use a different configuraton...that is, group by like Hosts that server specific purposes or some other arrangement? Just curious.
What you're doing is fine.
I've seen plenty of configurations where there's an AMD cluster and an Intel cluster.
Chipset compatability for VMotion/DRS is essential so it's the best way to manage this.
many, many thanks. appreciate all your advice