Virtual Machine Heartbeat

[haverer]

Evening All,

We have been experiencing issues with our 2 node Cluster. We keep getting the error:

Cluster Resource disk Q:\Quorum in cluster service or application 'Cluster Group' failed

I contacted Microsoft support who recommended we do the following:

1. Create a Heartbeat network connection on a different subnet. Add this to the cluster network.

I did not think you had to create a Heartbeat when using Virtual Machines? Am I wrong and if so, how do I go about configuring this in VSphere?

Many thanks

[amvmware]

You do need one if you are using MS clustering. The heartbeat network is a requirement of MS clustering and nothing to do with vSphere or VMware.

The heartbeat network is used to work out if the hosts making up the cluster are alive or not and is a function of MS clustering.

To create a heartbeat network if the hosts are VM's you add an additional NIC to each VM and give it an internal IP address such as 10.10.0.1 ...etc. You also need to configure the Clustering networking to know which NIC's to use.

[Troy_Clavell]

just in case

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_mscs.pdf

[haverer]

Thanks for the replies guys

Now, if I get this right what I want to do is the following:

1. Log onto VSphere Client

2. Add a NIC

3. Log onto Virtual Machine, rename the new NIC within Network Properties to Heartbeat

4. Assign the Heartbeat NIC an IP address of something like: 1.1.1.1. and usual Subnet Mask

5. Repeat these steps for the other Node

Is this correct? As it is a heartbeat should I be plugging a network cable into the spare physical NIC port on each physical ESX Server or doesn't this matter as it's a Virtual Machine? Is there anything else I need to configure?

[AndreTheGiant]

Is not only a question of networking (yes, is better have a different network for heartbeat, but can work also if shared with normal network).

Have a look at:

Andre