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citpaj
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VI Client 'Cluster' Icon - Red Exclamation

I've just created my first VI cluster and added two ESX 3.5 hosts along with their guests. The Cluster object had a little red triangular icon overlay, with an exclamation mark in the icon. This is obviously indication something isn't right or needs to be looked at, but i can't seem to find what the problem is. I checked alarms etc, and theres nothing showing for VM's or hosts. Any ideas how to figure out why the cluster is displaying this icon? Thanks.

PJ.

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RParker
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Well the hosts probably were happy before, however in a cluster (HA enabled) there has to be sufficient overhead to pick up the VM's from the other host. So when you have HA, the resources are 'reserved' for those VM's. Try turning HA off to see if the alert goes away.

If you only have 2 hosts, 50% of your machines are reserved for failover. The formula is number of machines / HA reserved reservation. The more machines you have, the more resources you have left over for failover. If you don't need HA, you can simply turn it off, that will save you a lot, especially with just 2 machines. HA is basically critical, can't go down, and automatic startup, but there is glitch, the VM's have to fail (shutdown) before they can be picked up by the new host, so the VM's will still be down for a few minutes. So unless you have high critical need, you probably don't need HA.

If you click on the cluster, you should see a status, and if the alarm was triggered, you should see a message to the affect of "There isn't sufficent resources to satisfy HA for cluster". Otherwise it could be something else triggering the error ( like a VM or something that is over it's CPU load) and it highlights the cluster to notify you there was a problem. Usually it just one host with a yellow triangle, but since it's a red mark on the cluster, I thought it could be specifically related to cluster only errors, that's why I was suggesting HA.

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RParker
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You can check the alarm triggers, but from what I see, you have 2 machines. If you have HA configured, it's most likely due to insufficient resources to fulfill HA. Or there is something wrong with one of your hosts (disconnected, etc..) and the Alarm hasn't reset. I normally turn them off, because they don't always reset, so it annoys me.

citpaj
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Interesting. I figured that if the ESX hosts were 'happy' before creating the cluster then they'd be OK afterwards. The host icons are fine ... just the cluster that's seemingly has an issue. Are cluster resource requirements greater than the sum of the two individual hosts? How can I confirm I have sufficient resources for HA?

Thanks.

PJ.

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RParker
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Well the hosts probably were happy before, however in a cluster (HA enabled) there has to be sufficient overhead to pick up the VM's from the other host. So when you have HA, the resources are 'reserved' for those VM's. Try turning HA off to see if the alert goes away.

If you only have 2 hosts, 50% of your machines are reserved for failover. The formula is number of machines / HA reserved reservation. The more machines you have, the more resources you have left over for failover. If you don't need HA, you can simply turn it off, that will save you a lot, especially with just 2 machines. HA is basically critical, can't go down, and automatic startup, but there is glitch, the VM's have to fail (shutdown) before they can be picked up by the new host, so the VM's will still be down for a few minutes. So unless you have high critical need, you probably don't need HA.

If you click on the cluster, you should see a status, and if the alarm was triggered, you should see a message to the affect of "There isn't sufficent resources to satisfy HA for cluster". Otherwise it could be something else triggering the error ( like a VM or something that is over it's CPU load) and it highlights the cluster to notify you there was a problem. Usually it just one host with a yellow triangle, but since it's a red mark on the cluster, I thought it could be specifically related to cluster only errors, that's why I was suggesting HA.

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citpaj
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Excellent answer. Thank you.

I unchecked HA and the cluster icon went back to normal. Given our limited resources (two hosts dedicated to HA), I'll move the hosts back into the Data Centre as stand-alone ESX hosts on the weekend.

Is there any way to set certain guests up to automatically VMOTION over to another host in the even their host fails? Should I open this as a new question?

Thanks again.

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