Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Page 1 of 7
Home Articles & Tutorials VMware ESX Articles VMotion & DRS & High Availability
Introduction
I am not biased to one virtualization solution or another but I know a great product and amazing features when I see them. VMware ESX Server and the VMware Infrastructure suite has a lot of amazing features that really set the bar for other virtualization products. One of those features is VMwares High Availability feature dubbed VMHA.
When a physical server goes down or loses all network connectivity, VMHA steps in and migrates the virtual guest machines off of that server and onto another server. This way, the virtual machines can be up and running again in just the time that it takes them to reboot.
http://www.virtualizationadmin.com/articles-tutorials/vmware-esx-articles/vmotion-drs-hi... 30/10/2010
Page 2 of 7
Figure 1: VMware High Availability (VMHA) - Image Courtesy of VMware.com This is a very powerful feature because it means that any operating system and appliance can have high availability just by running inside the VMware Infrastructure. There are a number of requirements to make this happen and there are both good and bad qualities of VMHA. I will cover all of that and show you how to configure VMHA in this article. Lets get started.
Figure 2: CPU Incompatibility If you cannot achieve CPU compatibility between hosts in the HA resource pool, then you will have to configure CPU Masking (see VMworld: VMotion between Apples and Oranges). Highly Recommended to have VMware management network redundancy (at least two NICs associated with the VMware port used for VMotion and iSCSI). If you do not have this, you will see:
http://www.virtualizationadmin.com/articles-tutorials/vmware-esx-articles/vmotion-drs-hi... 30/10/2010
Page 3 of 7
http://www.virtualizationadmin.com/articles-tutorials/vmware-esx-articles/vmotion-drs-hi... 30/10/2010
Page 4 of 7
Figure 4: Adding a New HA Cluster 2. This brings up the New Cluster Wizard. Give the Cluster a name and (assuming you are only creating a HA cluster), check the VMware HA cluster feature.
Figure 5: Naming the HA Cluster 3. Next, you will be given a chance to configure the HA options for this cluster. There is a lot to consider here how many hosts can fail, if guests will be powered on if the proper amount of resources is not available, host isolation, restart priority, and virtual machine monitoring. To learn more about these settings, please read the VMware 3.5 Documentation.
http://www.virtualizationadmin.com/articles-tutorials/vmware-esx-articles/vmotion-drs-hi... 30/10/2010
Page 5 of 7
Figure 6: Configuring HA Options 4. Select the swapfile location either with the VM on your shared storage or on the host. I recommend keeping the swapfile with the VM on your shared storage. 5. And finally, you are shown the ready to complete screen where you can review what you are about to do and click Finish. 6. Once the HA cluster is created, you need to move ESX host systems into the cluster by clicking on them and dragging them into the cluster. You can also move VMs to the cluster in the same way. Here are my results:
Figure 7: HA Cluster created with ESX Server hosts and VMs inside
http://www.virtualizationadmin.com/articles-tutorials/vmware-esx-articles/vmotion-drs-hi... 30/10/2010
Page 6 of 7
7. At this point, you should click on the cluster to see if there are any configuration issues (as you see in Figure 3). Also, notice how the cluster has its own tabs for Summary, Virtual Machines, Hosts, Resource Allocation, Performance, Tasks & Events, Alarms, and Permissions. 8. Even though I had configuration issues (no redundant management network), my VMHA cluster was still functional. To get around the insufficient resources to satisfy configured failover level for HA error message when powering up a VM, I changed the HA configuration to Allow VMs to be powered on even if they violate availability constraints. Lets test it.
Figure 9: After the failure of server ESX4 proving the VMHA was successful In this test, we saw that the Windows 2008 VM was moved from esx4 to esx3 when esx4 we restarted.
Conclusion
In this article, you learned what VMwares High Availability solution is and how to configure it. We started off with the requirements to use VMHA. From there, you saw what was good and what was not so good about VMHA. After showing you how to configure VMHA, I demonstrated exactly how it works in a real server failure. VMHA is really the leader when it comes to virtualization high availability.
http://www.virtualizationadmin.com/articles-tutorials/vmware-esx-articles/vmotion-drs-hi... 30/10/2010
Page 7 of 7
Related links
Set Your Desktop Free: Discover Benefits of IBM Virtual Client Solution IT Decision-Maker Perspective on Storage Solutions in Enterprise VMware Environment SAN/iQ: Enabling Technology for Effective VMware Deployments Charlotte County Finds An Ideal Business Continuity Solution Building A Virtual SAN Using VMware ESX Internal Storage
http://www.virtualizationadmin.com/articles-tutorials/vmware-esx-articles/vmotion-drs-hi... 30/10/2010