Yellow message in Host summary: HA agent on server in cluster has an error

[Dave_Suraci]

I am getting the error; HA agent on has an error. I have read many posts as to the possible causes of this error, and have gone through the suggested solutions and myriad possible causes.

We are using DNS, and I have verified it's settings. To be on the safe side, I also added all hosts into the hosts files on all ESX 3 servers. I can ping any one of them from any other using either FQDN or shortnames with no issues. Reconfiguring for HA completes, but continues to show an error without resolving the issue.

This is a production environment with 4 hosts in the cluster, so I cannot easily restart the problem server, as resources are beginning to become strained until we can add another host to the cluster.

When we first got the problem, I couldn't start the guest VMs on the host, but after running the 'Reconfigure for HA', I was able to start them, but the HA error message on the summary page is still there.

We are running ESX 3.0.1, 32039, Virtual Infrastructure Server 2.0.1, 40644, and Virtual Infrastructure Client 2.0.1, 32042.

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

[admin · Accepted solution]

Are you saying that you do not have enough capacity to VMotion all the guests to other Hosts?

This is an invalid HA Configuration,[/b] and requires fixing?

I think you might have room, or else your cluster would be telling you so.

1st try to disable HA on the cluster see what happens.

I would attempt to remove the problem Host and re-add to the cluster, then reboot if that fails.

[Dave_Suraci]

Thank you, that worked! I had tried, before your suggestion, creating a new cluster, putting the affected hosts in the new cluster, and then re-joining the original cluster also. In the new cluster, everything was OK, but going back into the original closter, the problem re-appeared.

I was a bit nervous performing your suggestion, never having taken down HA, and putting it back up. I guess I though it was more drastic and potentially destructive than it turned out to be.

It worked great! Thanks, again!