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VMWare HA Question/Issue

S

StarTrek4U

Gawd
Joined
Jan 8, 2003
Messages
1,011
So I have a pretty basic VM setup at work, a VCenter Server with 3 ESX hosts in an HA config. All are running ESX 4. So here's my issue/question....

I've updated my VCenter Server to the most recent version, and was working through patching the hosts. So I put the first host in maintenance mode, apply the patches, etc... all goes fine. It reboots, then I reconnect it to the HA cluster. That's when the fun begins. It will add to the cluster and do the config fine and join ok, but only for a few minutes before it shows disconnected in the VSphere client. I can connect to it directly fine, all the VMs on it power up fine, etc. It just won't stay in the cluster, if I restart the vCenter Service on the VC Server it will show up fine again but then disconnect after a few minutes.

My guess is that all the hosts need to be on the same version of ESX, especially since I'm quite a ways out for patches (going from build 208167 to 261974), but I wanted to confirm before I apply the patches to my other two hosts then break HA completely.

Any insight is appreciated.
 
1.) baseline host comparison + repository downloads
2.) turn off HA on the cluster, manually
3.) remediate an individual host
4.) apply patches
5.) reboot host
6.) repeat steps 3-5 on remaining 2 hosts
7.) turn HA back on
 
So HA isn't fully reliant on VC - the HA service will still be monitoring for failures even if the host has dropped from VC.

Check /var/log/vmware/vpx/vpxa.log - see if you can see any messages about why VPXA is loosing connection to VC.
 
StarTrek4U said:
So I have a pretty basic VM setup at work, a VCenter Server with 3 ESX hosts in an HA config. All are running ESX 4. So here's my issue/question....

I've updated my VCenter Server to the most recent version, and was working through patching the hosts. So I put the first host in maintenance mode, apply the patches, etc... all goes fine. It reboots, then I reconnect it to the HA cluster. That's when the fun begins. It will add to the cluster and do the config fine and join ok, but only for a few minutes before it shows disconnected in the VSphere client. I can connect to it directly fine, all the VMs on it power up fine, etc. It just won't stay in the cluster, if I restart the vCenter Service on the VC Server it will show up fine again but then disconnect after a few minutes.

My guess is that all the hosts need to be on the same version of ESX, especially since I'm quite a ways out for patches (going from build 208167 to 261974), but I wanted to confirm before I apply the patches to my other two hosts then break HA completely.

Any insight is appreciated.
Click to expand...

What do you mean you reconnected it to the HA cluster? Did you remove the host from the cluster before patching it?

The above poster is correct. VC simply configures HA on the hosts. The AAM (HA package) service runs on the hosts independently and HA still functions even if VC is shut down.
 
Turns out this is an issue where if you don't have a VC server IP config'd in your VCenter server a patch changes the VC Server IP to 127.0.0.1 on the client which causes it to not be able to re-connect, even if the DNS name for the server is correct. Basically all I had to do was put in the server IP, reconnect the host, everything worked.

Thanks for the replies.
 
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