Using VMware High Availability

 

 

How to Create a Cluster Enable for VMware HA
The following steps will show you how create cluster enabled for VMware High Availability.

  1. Go to Home > Inventory > Hosts and Cluster.
  2. In the inventory, right-click Lab Cluster and select Edit Settings. The Lab Cluster Settings dialog box appears. Cluster Features is the default view.
  3. Select the Turn On VMware HA check box.
  4. In the left pane, select VMware HA. In the Admission Control Policy pane, select Host failures cluster tolerates and verify that it is set to 1.
  5. In left pane, select Virtual Machine Options. Change the VM restart priority to High.
  6. In left pane, select VM Monitoring. View the default settings. DO not make changes.
  7. Click OK.
  8. Mon the Recent Tasks pane. Notice that VMware HA is being configured on each of the ESXi hosts in the cluster.
  9. After VMware HA is enabled, select Lab Cluster in the inventory and click Summary tab. Notice that a VMware HA pane is added to the Summary tab.
  10. Click the Cluster Operational Status link.
    The errors indicate that the ESXi hosts in the cluster have no management network redundancy. That is, each ESXi host has a single management network port configured for the cluster. VMware HA will still work if an ESXi host is configured with one management network port, but a second management network port is necessary for redundancy.
  11. Click Close.

 

 

 

 

How to Test VMware HA Functionality
The following steps will show you how to verify that VMware HA works properly.

  1. Simulate a host failure by rebooting one of the hosts in the cluster:
    1. Right-click one of the ESXi hosts in the inventory and select Reboot.
    2. When a message warns you that your host is not in maintenance mode, click Yes to reboot.
    3. Type Testing VMware HA as the reason for rebooting and click OK.
  2. Select Lab Cluster in the inventory and click the Tasks & Events tab.
  3. Click Events to display the Events view.
  4. From the drop-down menu, select Show Cluster Entries to monitor the events for your VMware HA cluster. The cluster entries are sorted by time. Notice the entries made by VMware HA when the host failure was detected.
  5. Select the running ESXi host in the cluster and click the Virtual Machines tab. The virtual machines that were running on the rebooted ESXi host should now be running on the remaining host in the cluster.
  6. Monitor the vCenter Server inventory until you see that the ESXi host is available. The ESXi host that was rebooted will be unavailable for a few minutes.