can the Guest OS boot from specified HA node ?

[kawasakit55]

hi everyone,

I'm testing VMware HA (ESX4.1) on 3 ESX hosts and some guest OSs.

I have one question.

can the guest os boot from specified ESX host when the original host is fail overred to other ESXs ?

example,

before failover:

ESX-0 ( running guestOS-01, guestOS-02 )

ESX-1 ( running guestOS-11, guestOS-12 )

ESX-2 ( running guestOS-21, guestOS-22 )

after failover occurred on ESX-0:

ESX-0 ( down )

ESX-1 ( running guestOS-11,guestOS12, and guestOS01 moved from ESX-0 )

ESX-2 ( running guestOS-21,guestOS22, and guestOS02 moved from ESX-0 )

I want to specify the failover ESX host for each guestOS.

when the ESX-0 has been down, I want to move and boot the guestOS-01 from ESX-01 to ESX-1 and move the guestOS-02 from ESX-0 to ESX-2.

Are there any parameters for it or cannot it ?

if any ideas, pls let me know....

Regards,

Kawasaki

[a_p_]

Welcome to the Community,

AFAIK there is no such option available.

From what I read you could eventually "fake" such a behavior by creating differently named port groups on the different hosts. HA would then start a VM on the hosts with the VM's configured port group. However, I didn't try this myself and with such an approach you will loose the ability to e.g. vMotion the VM to hosts without this port group.

André

[Gleed]

You can't specify a specific failover target, but you can specify a failover group using the "VM to Host" Affinity rules (http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/VMW-Whats-New-vSphere41-HA.pdf).

Here's a good blog:  http://frankdenneman.nl/2010/07/vm-to-hosts-affinity-rule/

Good luck!

-Kyle

[depping]

That is not an option currently. You could work with VM-Host affinity rules but that wouldn't make your environment more flexible. Is there a business requirement to do this?

Duncan (VCDX)

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