Vsphere HA automatic Vmotion not working

[zikorai]

Good Day ,

vmotion not working when I turn my Host Server of all virtual machines are migrated to  the other Hosts Servers automatically,but all virtual machines that migrated are restarted the HA is enbaled .

do you have any idea about my problem I will be thankful

Regards

[vThinkBeyondVM]

Hi zikorai,

I am not sure, I am following your query. can you please elaborate bit more step by step?

[zikorai]

Hi vickyvision2020

I have three Hots ESXI5.1 , I have vmotion enabled  . yesterday I tried to stop one host from maintenance raison when I stoped the the virtual machines are migrated to  the other Hosts Servers automatically when I cheked these virtual machines I found that are restarted .

Regards

[vThinkBeyondVM]

couple of queries:

1. whether DRS is also enabled on cluster in fully automated mode?

2. are you putting host into maintanance mode from VI client ?(right click on host >> enter maintenance mode) OR did you shutdown that host ?

[zikorai]

1- Yes DRS is enabled on cluster in fully automaed mode

2- I shutdown the host .

It's realy strange normaly the virtual machine shouldn't restart

Regards

[vThinkBeyondVM]

1. As you have shutdown the host. All the VMs on that hosts are failed over to other hosts in the cluster. Hence HA will restart the VMs . This is expected behavior.

2. Note that when you shutdown the host, DRS is not in picture, HA will un-register these VMs from shutdown host and re-register to other available host in the cluster assuming that host is failed. This restart operation is NOT vMotion. vMotion is leveraged by DRS to move VMs to other hosts as a part of cpu/memory load balancing. Restarting VMs will have minimal downtime.

3. Above operation you could have done without downtime as follows:

     1. DRS is enabled in fully automated mode & you have enough resources in cluster to satisfy HA constraints (ie. admission control policies settings)

     2. You can put host into maintenance mode from VI client  (right click on host >> enter maintenance mode) , Now DRS will automatically move all VMs to other host. (vMotion). Host will be put into maintenance mode only when HA resource constraints are satisfied. (If VMs are not automatically moving to other hosts, you can check DRS faults for more details) . You will be given all the proper warnings when you put host into maintence mode.

Let me know if you need any other help.

[zikorai]

so if I understand well  that if host is shutdown mean that the virtual machine will have small downtime ( electrical problem with host for example )

[vThinkBeyondVM · Accepted solution]

Yes . You are correct.

1. If OS or VM  is failed, VM will be restarted on same host .

2. if  HA is unable to get network or datastore heartbeats, it is mean that host is failed and HA will  restart VMs on other hosts.

Restarting VM will have small downtime.