Vsphere Esxi Vcenter Server 702 Availability Guide

vSphere Availability
Update 2
VMware vSphere 7.0
VMware ESXi 7.0
vCenter Server 7.0
You can find the most up-to-date technical documentation on the VMware website at:
https://docs.vmware.com/
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Contents
About vSphere Availability 6
1 Business Continuity and Minimizing Downtime 7

Reducing Planned Downtime 7
Preventing Unplanned Downtime 8
vSphere HA Provides Rapid Recovery from Outages 8
vSphere Fault Tolerance Provides Continuous Availability 10
Protecting vCenter Server with vCenter High Availability 10
Protecting vCenter Server with VMware Service Lifecycle Manager 10
2 Creating and Using vSphere HA Clusters 11

How vSphere HA Works 11
Primary and Secondary Hosts 12
Host Failure Types 13
Determining Responses to Host Issues 14
VM and Application Monitoring 16
VM Component Protection 17
Network Partitions 18
Datastore Heartbeating 19
vSphere HA Security 20
vSphere HA Admission Control 21
Cluster Resources Percentage Admission Control 22
Slot Policy Admission Control 24
Dedicated Failover Hosts Admission Control 27
vSphere HA Interoperability 27
Using vSphere HA with vSAN 27
Using vSphere HA and DRS Together 29
Other vSphere HA Interoperability Issues 30
Creating a vSphere HA Cluster 31
vSphere HA Checklist 31
Create a vSphere HA Cluster in the vSphere Client 32
Configuring vSphere Availability Settings 34
Configuring Responses to Failures 34
Configure Proactive HA 37
Configure Admission Control 38
Configure Heartbeat Datastores 39
Set Advanced Options 40
Best Practices for VMware vSphere® High Availability Clusters 44
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Best Practices for Networking 44

Best Practices for Interoperability 46
Best Practices for Cluster Monitoring 47
Change in behavior for HA VIBs 48
3 Providing Fault Tolerance for Virtual Machines 49

How Fault Tolerance Works 49
Fault Tolerance Use Cases 50
Fault Tolerance Requirements, Limits, and Licensing 51
Fault Tolerance Interoperability 52
vSphere Features not Supported with Fault Tolerance 52
Features and Devices Incompatible with Fault Tolerance 52
Using Fault Tolerance with DRS 53
Preparing Your Cluster and Hosts for Fault Tolerance 54
Fault Tolerance Checklist 54
Configure Networking for Host Machines 55
Create Cluster and Check Compliance 56
Using Fault Tolerance 57
Validation Checks for Turning On Fault Tolerance 57
Turn On Fault Tolerance 58
Turn Off Fault Tolerance 59
Suspend Fault Tolerance 60
Migrate Secondary 60
Test Failover 60
Test Restart Secondary 61
Upgrade Hosts Used for Fault Tolerance 61
Enable Fault Tolerance Encryption 62
Best Practices for Fault Tolerance 63
Legacy Fault Tolerance 65
Troubleshooting Fault Tolerant Virtual Machines 65
Hardware Virtualization Not Enabled 66
Compatible Hosts Not Available for Secondary VM 66
Secondary VM on Overcommitted Host Degrades Performance of Primary VM 67
Increased Network Latency Observed in FT Virtual Machines 67
Some Hosts Are Overloaded with FT Virtual Machines 68
Losing Access to FT Metadata Datastore 68
Turning On vSphere FT for Powered-On VM Fails 69
FT Virtual Machines not Placed or Evacuated by vSphere DRS 69
Fault Tolerant Virtual Machine Failovers 70
4 vCenter High Availability 72
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Plan the vCenter HA Deployment 73

vCenter Architecture Overview 73
vCenter HA Hardware and Software Requirements 74
Configuration Workflow Overview in the vSphere Client 75
Configure the Network 76
Configure vCenter HA With the vSphere Client 77
Manage the vCenter HA Configuration 79
Set Up SNMP Traps 80
Set Up Your Environment to Use Custom Certificates 81
Manage vCenter HA SSH Keys 81
Initiate a vCenter HA Failover 82
Edit the vCenter HA Cluster Configuration 82
Perform Backup and Restore Operations 84
Remove a vCenter HA Configuration 84
Reboot All vCenter HA Nodes 85
Change the Server Environment 85
Collecting Support Bundles for a vCenter HA Node 85
Troubleshoot Your vCenter HA Environment 86
vCenter HA Clone Operation Fails During Deployment 86
Redeploy the Passive or Witness node 87
vCenter HA Deployment Fails with an Error 88
Troubleshooting a Degraded vCenter HA Cluster 88
Recovering from Isolated vCenter HA Nodes 89
Resolving Failover Failures 90
VMware vCenter® HA Alarms and Events 91
Patching a vCenter High Availability Environment 92
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About vSphere Availability
vSphere Availability describes solutions that provide business continuity, including how to
®
establish vSphere High Availability (HA) and vSphere Fault Tolerance.
At VMware, we value inclusion. To foster this principle within our customer, partner, and internal
community, we create content using inclusive language.
Intended Audience
This information is for anyone who wants to provide business continuity through the vSphere HA
and Fault Tolerance solutions. The information in this book is for experienced Windows or Linux
system administrators who are familiar with virtual machine technology and data center
operations.
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Business Continuity and
Minimizing Downtime 1
Downtime, whether planned or unplanned, brings considerable costs. However, solutions that
ensure higher levels of availability have traditionally been costly, hard to implement, and difficult
to manage.
VMware software makes it simpler and less expensive to provide higher levels of availability for
important applications. With vSphere, you can increase the baseline level of availability provided
for all applications and provide higher levels of availability more easily and cost effectively. With
vSphere, you can:
n Provide high availability independent of hardware, operating system, and applications.
n Reduce the planned downtime for common maintenance operations.
n Provide automatic recovery in cases of failure.
vSphere makes it possible to reduce planned downtime, prevent unplanned downtime, and
recover rapidly from outages.
This chapter includes the following topics:
n Reducing Planned Downtime
n Preventing Unplanned Downtime
n vSphere HA Provides Rapid Recovery from Outages
n vSphere Fault Tolerance Provides Continuous Availability
n Protecting vCenter Server with vCenter High Availability
n Protecting vCenter Server with VMware Service Lifecycle Manager
Reducing Planned Downtime

Planned downtime typically accounts for over 80% of data center downtime. Hardware
maintenance, server migration, and firmware updates all require downtime for physical servers.
To minimize the impact of this downtime, organizations are forced to delay maintenance until
inconvenient and difficult-to-schedule downtime windows.
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vSphere makes it possible for organizations to dramatically reduce planned downtime. Because
workloads in a vSphere environment can be dynamically moved to different physical servers
without downtime or service interruption, server maintenance can be performed without
requiring application and service downtime. With vSphere, organizations can:
n Eliminate downtime for common maintenance operations.
n Eliminate planned maintenance windows.
n Perform maintenance at any time without disrupting users and services.

®
The vSphere vMotion and Storage vMotion functionality in vSphere makes it possible for
organizations to reduce planned downtime because workloads in a VMware environment can be
dynamically moved to different physical servers or to different underlying storage without
service interruption. Administrators can perform faster and completely transparent maintenance
operations, without being forced to schedule inconvenient maintenance windows.
Preventing Unplanned Downtime

While an ESXi host provides a robust platform for running applications, an organization must also
protect itself from unplanned downtime caused from hardware or application failures. vSphere
builds important capabilities into data center infrastructure that can help you prevent unplanned
downtime.
These vSphere capabilities are part of virtual infrastructure and are transparent to the operating
system and applications running in virtual machines. These features can be configured and
utilized by all the virtual machines on a physical system, reducing the cost and complexity of
providing higher availability. Key availability capabilities are built into vSphere:
n Shared storage. Eliminate single points of failure by storing virtual machine files on shared
storage, such as Fibre Channel or iSCSI SAN, or NAS. The use of SAN mirroring and
replication features can be used to keep updated copies of virtual disk at disaster recovery
sites.
n Network interface teaming. Provide tolerance of individual network card failures.
n Storage multipathing. Tolerate storage path failures.
In addition to these capabilities, the vSphere HA and Fault Tolerance features can minimize or
eliminate unplanned downtime by providing rapid recovery from outages and continuous
availability, respectively.
vSphere HA Provides Rapid Recovery from Outages

vSphere HA leverages multiple ESXi hosts configured as a cluster to provide rapid recovery from
outages and cost-effective high availability for applications running in virtual machines.
vSphere HA protects application availability in the following ways:
n It protects against a server failure by restarting the virtual machines on other hosts within the
cluster.
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n It protects against application failure by continuously monitoring a virtual machine and

resetting it in the event that a failure is detected.
n It protects against datastore accessibility failures by restarting affected virtual machines on

other hosts which still have access to their datastores.
n It protects virtual machines against network isolation by restarting them if their host becomes
isolated on the management or vSAN network. This protection is provided even if the
network has become partitioned.
Unlike other clustering solutions, vSphere HA provides the infrastructure to protect all workloads
with the infrastructure:
n You do not need to install special software within the application or virtual machine. All
workloads are protected by vSphere HA. After vSphere HA is configured, no actions are
required to protect new virtual machines. They are automatically protected.
n You can combine vSphere HA with vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) to protect
against failures and to provide load balancing across the hosts within a cluster.
vSphere HA has several advantages over traditional failover solutions:
Minimal setup
After a vSphere HA cluster is set up, all virtual machines in the cluster get failover support
without additional configuration.
Reduced hardware cost and setup
The virtual machine acts as a portable container for the applications and it can be moved
among hosts. Administrators avoid duplicate configurations on multiple machines. When you
use vSphere HA, you must have sufficient resources to fail over the number of hosts you
want to protect with vSphere HA. However, the VMware vCenter Server® system
automatically manages resources and configures clusters.
Increased application availability
Any application running inside a virtual machine has access to increased availability. Because
the virtual machine can recover from hardware failure, all applications that start at boot have
increased availability without increased computing needs, even if the application is not itself a
clustered application. By monitoring and responding to VMware Tools heartbeats and
restarting nonresponsive virtual machines, it protects against guest operating system
crashes.
DRS and vMotion integration
If a host fails and virtual machines are restarted on other hosts, DRS can provide migration
recommendations or migrate virtual machines for balanced resource allocation. If one or both
of the source and destination hosts of a migration fail, vSphere HA can help recover from that
failure.
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vSphere Fault Tolerance Provides Continuous Availability

vSphere HA provides a base level of protection for your virtual machines by restarting virtual
machines in the event of a host failure. vSphere Fault Tolerance provides a higher level of
availability, allowing users to protect any virtual machine from a host failure with no loss of data,
transactions, or connections.
Fault Tolerance provides continuous availability by ensuring that the states of the Primary and
Secondary VMs are identical at any point in the instruction execution of the virtual machine.
If either the host running the Primary VM or the host running the Secondary VM fails, an
immediate and transparent failover occurs. The functioning ESXi host seamlessly becomes the
Primary VM host without losing network connections or in-progress transactions. With
transparent failover, there is no data loss and network connections are maintained. After a
transparent failover occurs, a new Secondary VM is respawned and redundancy is re-
established. The entire process is transparent and fully automated and occurs even if vCenter
Server is unavailable.
Protecting vCenter Server with vCenter High Availability

vCenter High Availability (vCenter HA) protects not only against host and hardware failures but
also against vCenter Server application failures. Using automated failover from active to passive,
vCenter HA supports high availability with minimal downtime.
You configure vCenter HA from the vSphere Client. The configuration wizard provides these
options.
Option Description
Automatic The automatic option clones the Active node to the Passive node and witness node, and configures the
nodes for you.
If your environment meets the following requirements, you can use this option.
n The vCenter Server that becomes the Active node is managing its own ESXi host and its own virtual
machine. This configuration is sometimes called a self-managed vCenter Server.
Manual The manual option offers more flexibility. You can use this option provided that your environment meets
hardware and software requirements.
If you select this option, you are responsible for cloning the Active node to the Passive node and the
Witness node. You must also perform some networking configuration.
Protecting vCenter Server with VMware Service Lifecycle

Manager
Availability of vCenter Server is provided by VMware Service Lifecycle Manager.
If a vCenter service fails, VMware Service Lifecycle Manager restarts it. VMware Service Lifecycle
Manager monitors the health of services and it takes preconfigured remediation action when it
detects a failure. Service does not restart if multiple attempts to remediate fail.
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Creating and Using vSphere HA
Clusters 2
vSphere HA clusters enable a collection of ESXi hosts to work together so that, as a group, they
provide higher levels of availability for virtual machines than each ESXi host can provide
individually. When you plan the creation and usage of a new vSphere HA cluster, the options you
select affect the way that cluster responds to failures of hosts or virtual machines.
Before you create a vSphere HA cluster, you should know how vSphere HA identifies host
failures and isolation and how it responds to these situations. You also should know how
admission control works so that you can choose the policy that fits your failover needs. After you
establish a cluster, you can customize its behavior with advanced options and optimize its
performance by following recommended best practices.
Note You might get an error message when you try to use vSphere HA. For information about
error messages related to vSphere HA, see the VMware knowledge base article at http://
kb.vmware.com/kb/1033634.
n How vSphere HA Works
n vSphere HA Admission Control
n vSphere HA Interoperability
n Creating a vSphere HA Cluster
n Configuring vSphere Availability Settings
n Best Practices for VMware vSphere® High Availability Clusters
n Change in behavior for HA VIBs
How vSphere HA Works

vSphere HA provides high availability for virtual machines by pooling the virtual machines and the
hosts they reside on into a cluster. Hosts in the cluster are monitored and in the event of a failure,
the virtual machines on a failed host are restarted on alternate hosts.
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When you create a vSphere HA cluster, a single host is automatically elected as the primary host.
The primary host communicates with vCenter Server and monitors the state of all protected
virtual machines and of the secondary hosts. Different types of host failures are possible, and the
primary host must detect and appropriately deal with the failure. The primary host must
distinguish between a failed host and one that is in a network partition or that has become
network isolated. The primary host uses network and datastore heartbeating to determine the
type of failure.
Sphere HA Clusters
(http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid2296383276001?
bctid=ref:vSphereHAClusters)
Primary and Secondary Hosts

When you add a host to a vSphere HA cluster, an agent is uploaded to the host and configured
to communicate with other agents in the cluster. Each host in the cluster functions as a primary
host or a secondary host.
When vSphere HA is enabled for a cluster, all active hosts (that are not in standby, maintenance
mode or not disconnected) participate in an election to choose the cluster's primary host. The
host that mounts the greatest number of datastores has an advantage in the election. Only one
primary host typically exists per cluster and all other hosts are secondary hosts. If the primary
host fails, is shut down or put in standby mode, or is removed from the cluster a new election is
held.
The primary host in a cluster has several responsibilities:
n Monitoring the state of secondary hosts. If a secondary host fails or becomes unreachable,
the primary host identifies which virtual machines must be restarted.
n Monitoring the power state of all protected virtual machines. If one virtual machine fails, the
primary host ensures that it is restarted. Using a local placement engine, the primary host
also determines where the restart takes place.
n Managing the lists of cluster hosts and protected virtual machines.
n Acting as the vCenter Server management interface to the cluster and reporting the cluster
health state.
The secondary hosts primarily contribute to the cluster by running virtual machines locally,
monitoring their runtime states, and reporting state updates to the primary host. A primary host
can also run and monitor virtual machines. Both secondary hosts and primary hosts implement
the VM and Application Monitoring features.
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One of the functions performed by the primary host is to orchestrate restarts of protected virtual
machines. A virtual machine is protected by a primary host after vCenter Server observes that
the virtual machine's power state has changed from powered off to powered on in response to a
user action. The primary host persists the list of protected virtual machines in the cluster's
datastores. A newly elected primary host uses this information to determine which virtual
machines to protect.
Note If you disconnect a host from a cluster, the virtual machines registered to that host are
unprotected by vSphere HA.
Host Failure Types

The primary host of a VMware vSphere® High Availability cluster is responsible for detecting the
failure of secondary hosts. Depending on the type of failure detected, the virtual machines
running on the hosts might need to be failed over.
In a vSphere HA cluster, three types of host failure are detected:
n Failure. A host stops functioning.
n Isolation. A host becomes network isolated.
n Partition. A host loses network connectivity with the primary host.
The primary host monitors the liveness of the secondary hosts in the cluster. This communication
happens through the exchange of network heartbeats every second. When the primary host
stops receiving these heartbeats from a secondary host, it checks for host liveness before
declaring the host failed. The liveness check that the primary host performs is to determine
whether the secondary host is exchanging heartbeats with one of the datastores. See Datastore
Heartbeating . Also, the primary host checks whether the host responds to ICMP pings sent to its
management IP addresses.
If a primary host cannot communicate directly with the agent on a secondary host, the secondary
host does not respond to ICMP pings. If the agent is not issuing heartbeats, it is viewed as failed.
The host's virtual machines are restarted on alternate hosts. If such a secondary host is
exchanging heartbeats with a datastore, the primary host assumes that the secondary host is in a
network partition or is network isolated. So, the primary host continues to monitor the host and
its virtual machines. See Network Partitions .
Host network isolation occurs when a host is still running, but it can no longer observe traffic
from vSphere HA agents on the management network. If a host stops observing this traffic, it
attempts to ping the cluster isolation addresses. If this pinging also fails, the host declares that it
is isolated from the network.
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The primary host monitors the virtual machines that are running on an isolated host. If the
primary host observes that the VMs power off, and the primary host is responsible for the VMs, it
restarts them.
Note If you ensure that the network infrastructure is sufficiently redundant and that at least one
network path is always available, host network isolation is less likely to occur.
Proactive HA Failures
A Proactive HA failure occurs when a host component fails, which results in a loss of redundancy
or a noncatastrophic failure. However, the functional behavior of the VMs residing on the host is
not yet affected. For example, if a power supply on the host fails, but other power supplies are
available, that is a Proactive HA failure.
If a Proactive HA failure occurs, you can automate the remediation action taken in the vSphere
Availability section of the vSphere Client. The VMs on the affected host can be evacuated to
other hosts and the host is either placed in Quarantine mode or Maintenance mode.
Note Your cluster must use vSphere DRS for the Proactive HA failure monitoring to work.
Determining Responses to Host Issues

If a host fails and its virtual machines must be restarted, you can control the order in which the
virtual machines are restarted with the VM restart priority setting. You can also configure how
vSphere HA responds if hosts lose management network connectivity with other hosts by using
the host isolation response setting. Other factors are also considered when vSphere HA restarts
a virtual machine after a failure.
The following settings apply to all virtual machines in the cluster in the case of a host failure or
isolation. You can also configure exceptions for specific virtual machines. See Customize an
Individual Virtual Machine .
Host Isolation Response

Host isolation response determines what happens when a host in a vSphere HA cluster loses its
management network connections, but continues to run. You can use the isolation response to
have vSphere HA power off virtual machines that are running on an isolated host and restart
them on a non-isolated host. Host isolation responses require that Host Monitoring Status is
enabled. If Host Monitoring Status is disabled, host isolation responses are also suspended. A
host determines that it is isolated when it is unable to communicate with the agents running on
the other hosts, and it is unable to ping its isolation addresses. The host then executes its
isolation response. The responses are Power off and restart VMs or Shutdown and restart VMs.
You can customize this property for individual virtual machines.
Note If a virtual machine has a restart priority setting of Disabled, no host isolation response is
made.
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To use the Shutdown and restart VMs setting, you must install VMware Tools in the guest
operating system of the virtual machine. Shutting down the virtual machine provides the
advantage of preserving its state. Shutting down is better than powering off the virtual machine,
which does not flush most recent changes to disk or commit transactions. Virtual machines that
are in the process of shutting down take longer to fail over while the shutdown completes. Virtual
Machines that have not shut down in 300 seconds, or the time specified in the advanced option
das.isolationshutdowntimeout, are powered off.
After you create a vSphere HA cluster, you can override the default cluster settings for Restart
Priority and Isolation Response for specific virtual machines. Such overrides are useful for virtual
machines that are used for special tasks. For example, virtual machines that provide
infrastructure services like DNS or DHCP might need to be powered on before other virtual
machines in the cluster.
A virtual machine "split-brain" condition can occur when a host becomes isolated or partitioned
from a primary host and the primary host cannot communicate with it using heartbeat
datastores. In this situation, the primary host cannot determine that the host is alive and so
declares it dead. The primary host then attempts to restart the virtual machines that are running
on the isolated or partitioned host. This attempt succeeds if the virtual machines remain running
on the isolated/partitioned host and that host lost access to the virtual machines' datastores
when it became isolated or partitioned. A split-brain condition then exists because there are two
instances of the virtual machine. However, only one instance is able to read or write the virtual
machine's virtual disks. VM Component Protection can be used to prevent this split-brain
condition. When you enable VMCP with the aggressive setting, it monitors the datastore
accessibility of powered-on virtual machines, and shuts down those that lose access to their
datastores.
To recover from this situation, ESXi generates a question on the virtual machine that has lost the
disk locks for when the host comes out of isolation and cannot reacquire the disk locks. vSphere
HA automatically answers this question, allowing the virtual machine instance that has lost the
disk locks to power off, leaving just the instance that has the disk locks.
Virtual Machine Dependencies

You can create dependencies between groups of virtual machines. To do so, you must first
create the VM groups in the vSphere Client by going to the Configure tab for the cluster and
selecting VM/Host Groups. Once the groups have been created, you can create restart
dependency rules between the groups by browsing toVM/Host Rules and in the Type drop-
down menu, select Virtual Machines to Virtual Machines. These rules can specify that certain VM
groups cannot be restarted until other, specified VM groups have been Ready first.
Factors Considered for Virtual Machine Restarts

After a failure, the cluster's primary host attempts to restart affected virtual machines by
identifying a host that can power them on. When choosing such a host, the primary host
considers a number of factors.
File accessibility
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Before a virtual machine can be started, its files must be accessible from one of the active
cluster hosts that the primary can communicate with over the network
Virtual machine and host compatibility
If there are accessible hosts, the virtual machine must be compatible with at least one of
them. The compatibility set for a virtual machine includes the effect of any required VM-Host
affinity rules. For example, if a rule only permits a virtual machine to run on two hosts, it is
considered for placement on those two hosts.
Resource reservations
Of the hosts that the virtual machine can run on, at least one must have sufficient unreserved
capacity to meet the memory overhead of the virtual machine and any resource reservations.
Four types of reservations are considered: CPU, Memory, vNIC, and Virtual flash. Also,
sufficient network ports must be available to power on the virtual machine.
Host limits
In addition to resource reservations, a virtual machine can only be placed on a host if doing
so does not violate the maximum number of allowed virtual machines or the number of in-use
vCPUs.
Feature constraints
If the advanced option has been set that requires vSphere HA to enforce VM to VM anti-
affinity rules, vSphere HA does not violate this rule. Also, vSphere HA does not violate any
configured per host limits for fault tolerant virtual machines.
If no hosts satisfy the preceding considerations, the primary host issues an event stating that
there are not enough resources for vSphere HA to start the VM and tries again when the cluster
conditions have changed. For example, if the virtual machine is not accessible, the primary host
tries again after a change in file accessibility.
VM and Application Monitoring

VM Monitoring restarts individual virtual machines if their VMware Tools heartbeats are not
received within a set time. Similarly, Application Monitoring can restart a virtual machine if the
heartbeats for an application it is running are not received. You can enable these features and
configure the sensitivity with which vSphere HA monitors non-responsiveness.
When you enable VM Monitoring, the VM Monitoring service (using VMware Tools) evaluates
whether each virtual machine in the cluster is running by checking for regular heartbeats and I/O
activity from the VMware Tools process running inside the guest. If no heartbeats or I/O activity
are received, this is most likely because the guest operating system has failed or VMware Tools is
not being allocated any time to complete tasks. In such a case, the VM Monitoring service
determines that the virtual machine has failed and the virtual machine is rebooted to restore
service.
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Occasionally, virtual machines or applications that are still functioning properly stop sending
heartbeats. To avoid unnecessary resets, the VM Monitoring service also monitors a virtual
machine's I/O activity. If no heartbeats are received within the failure interval, the I/O stats
interval (a cluster-level attribute) is checked. The I/O stats interval determines if any disk or
network activity has occurred for the virtual machine during the previous two minutes (120
seconds). If not, the virtual machine is reset. This default value (120 seconds) can be changed
using the advanced option das.iostatsinterval.
To enable Application Monitoring, you must first obtain the appropriate SDK (or be using an
application that supports VMware Application Monitoring) and use it to set up customized
heartbeats for the applications you want to monitor. After you have done this, Application
Monitoring works much the same way that VM Monitoring does. If the heartbeats for an
application are not received for a specified time, its virtual machine is restarted.
You can configure the level of monitoring sensitivity. Highly sensitive monitoring results in a more
rapid conclusion that a failure has occurred. While unlikely, highly sensitive monitoring might lead
to falsely identifying failures when the virtual machine or application in question is actually still
working, but heartbeats have not been received due to factors such as resource constraints. Low
sensitivity monitoring results in longer interruptions in service between actual failures and virtual
machines being reset. Select an option that is an effective compromise for your needs.
You can also specify custom values for both monitoring sensitivity and the I/O stats interval by
selecting the Custom checkbox.
Table 2-1. VM Monitoring Settings

Setting Failure Interval (seconds) Reset Period
High 30 1 hour
Medium 60 24 hours
Low 120 7 days
After failures are detected, vSphere HA resets virtual machines. The reset ensures that services
remain available. To avoid resetting virtual machines repeatedly for nontransient errors, by
default, virtual machines will be reset only three times during a certain configurable time interval.
After virtual machines have been reset three times, vSphere HA makes no further attempts to
reset the virtual machines after subsequent failures until after the specified time has elapsed. You
can configure the number of resets using the Maximum per-VM resets custom setting.
Note The reset statistics are cleared when a virtual machine is powered off then back on, or
when it is migrated using vMotion to another host. This causes the guest operating system to
reboot, but is not the same as a 'restart' in which the power state of the virtual machine is
changed.
VM Component Protection
If VM Component Protection (VMCP) is enabled, vSphere HA can detect datastore accessibility
failures and provide automated recovery for affected virtual machines.
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VMCP provides protection against datastore accessibility failures that can affect a virtual machine
running on a host in a vSphere HA cluster. When a datastore accessibility failure occurs, the
affected host can no longer access the storage path for a specific datastore. You can determine
the response that vSphere HA will make to such a failure, ranging from the creation of event
alarms to virtual machine restarts on other hosts.
Note When you use the VM Component Protection feature, your ESXi hosts must be version 6.0
or higher.
Types of Failure
There are two types of datastore accessibility failure:
PDL
PDL (Permanent Device Loss) is an unrecoverable loss of accessibility that occurs when a
storage device reports the datastore is no longer accessible by the host. This condition
cannot be reverted without powering off virtual machines.
APD
APD (All Paths Down) represents a transient or unknown accessibility loss or any other
unidentified delay in I/O processing. This type of accessibility issue is recoverable.
Configuring VMCP
VM Component Protection is configured in the vSphere Client. Go to the Configure tab and click
vSphere Availability and Edit. Under Failures and Responses you can select Datastore with PDL
or Datastore with APD. The storage protection levels you can choose and the virtual machine
remediation actions available differ depending on the type of database accessibility failure.
PDL Failures
Under Datastore with PDL, you can select Issue events or Power off and restart VMs.
APD Failures
The response to APD events is more complex and accordingly the configuration is more fine-
grained. You can select Issue events, Power off and restart VMs--conservative restart
policy, or Power off and restart VMs--aggressive restart policy
Note If either the Host Monitoring or VM Restart Priority settings are disabled, VMCP cannot
perform virtual machine restarts. Storage health can still be monitored and events can be issued,
however.
Network Partitions
When a management network failure occurs for a vSphere HA cluster, a subset of the cluster's
hosts might be unable to communicate over the management network with the other hosts.
Multiple partitions can occur in a cluster.
VMware, Inc. 18
A partitioned cluster leads to degraded virtual machine protection and cluster management
functionality. Correct the partitioned cluster as soon as possible.
n Virtual machine protection. vCenter Server allows a virtual machine to be powered on, but it
can be protected only if it is running in the same partition as the primary host that is
responsible for it. The primary host must be communicating with vCenter Server. A primary
host is responsible for a virtual machine if it has exclusively locked a system-defined file on
the datastore that contains the virtual machine's configuration file.
n Cluster management. vCenter Server can communicate with the primary host, but only a
subset of the secondary hosts. As a result, changes in configuration that affect vSphere HA
might not take effect until after the partition is resolved. This failure could result in one of the
partitions operating under the old configuration, while another uses the new settings.
Datastore Heartbeating
When the primary host in a VMware vSphere® High Availability cluster cannot communicate with
a secondary host over the management network, the primary host uses datastore heartbeating
to determine whether the secondary host has failed, is in a network partition, or is network
isolated. If the secondary host has stopped datastore heartbeating, it is considered to have failed
and its virtual machines are restarted elsewhere.
VMware vCenter Server® selects a preferred set of datastores for heartbeating. This selection is
made to maximize the number of hosts that have access to a heartbeating datastore and
minimize the likelihood that the datastores are backed by the same LUN or NFS server.
You can use the advanced option das.heartbeatdsperhost to change the number of heartbeat
datastores selected by vCenter Server for each host. The default is two and the maximum valid
value is five.
vSphere HA creates a directory at the root of each datastore that is used for both datastore
heartbeating and for persisting the set of protected virtual machines. The name of the directory
is .vSphere-HA. Do not delete or modify the files stored in this directory, because this can have
an impact on operations. Because more than one cluster might use a datastore, subdirectories
for this directory are created for each cluster. Root owns these directories and files and only root
can read and write to them. The disk space used by vSphere HA depends on several factors
including which VMFS version is in use and the number of hosts that use the datastore for
heartbeating. With vmfs3, the maximum usage is 2GB and the typical usage is 3MB. With vmfs5,
the maximum and typical usage is 3MB. vSphere HA use of the datastores adds negligible
overhead and has no performance impact on other datastore operations.
VMware, Inc. 19
vSphere HA limits the number of virtual machines that can have configuration files on a single
datastore. See Configuration Maximums for updated limits. If you place more than this number of
virtual machines on a datastore and power them on, vSphere HA protects virtual machines only
up to the limit.
Note A vSAN datastore cannot be used for datastore heartbeating. Therefore, if no other
shared storage is accessible to all hosts in the cluster, there can be no heartbeat datastores in
use. However, if you have storage that is accessible by an alternate network path independent of
the vSAN network, you can use it to set up a heartbeat datastore.
vSphere HA Security
vSphere HA is enhanced by several security features.
Select firewall ports opened
vSphere HA uses TCP and UDP port 8182 for agent-to-agent communication. The firewall
ports open and close automatically to ensure they are open only when needed.
Configuration files protected using file system permissions
vSphere HA stores configuration information on the local storage or on ramdisk if there is no

local datastore. These files are protected using file system permissions and they are
accessible only to the root user. Hosts without local storage are only supported if they are
managed by Auto Deploy.
Detailed logging
The location where vSphere HA places log files depends on the version of host.
n For ESXi 5.x hosts, vSphere HA writes to syslog only by default, so logs are placed where
syslog is configured to put them. The log file names for vSphere HA are prepended with
fdm, fault domain manager, which is a service of vSphere HA.
n For legacy ESXi 4.x hosts, vSphere HA writes to /var/log/vmware/fdm on local disk, as
well as syslog if it is configured.
n For legacy ESX 4.x hosts, vSphere HA writes to /var/log/vmware/fdm.
Secure vSphere HA logins
vSphere HA logs onto the vSphere HA agents using a user account, vpxuser, created by
vCenter Server. This account is the same account used by vCenter Server to manage the
host. vCenter Server creates a random password for this account and changes the password
periodically. The time period is set by the vCenter Server
VirtualCenter.VimPasswordExpirationInDays setting. Users with administrative privileges on the
root folder of the host can log in to the agent.
Secure communication
VMware, Inc. 20
All communication between vCenter Server and the vSphere HA agent is done over SSL.
Agent-to-agent communication also uses SSL except for election messages, which occur over
UDP. Election messages are verified over SSL so that a rogue agent can prevent only the
host on which the agent is running from being elected as a primary host. In this case, a
configuration issue for the cluster is issued so the user is aware of the problem.
Host SSL certificate verification required
vSphere HA requires that each host have a verified SSL certificate. Each host generates a
self-signed certificate when it is booted for the first time. This certificate can then be
regenerated or replaced with one issued by an authority. If the certificate is replaced,
vSphere HA needs to be reconfigured on the host. If a host becomes disconnected from
vCenter Server after its certificate is updated and the ESXi or ESX Host agent is restarted,
then vSphere HA is automatically reconfigured when the host is reconnected to vCenter
Server. If the disconnection does not occur because vCenter Server host SSL certificate
verification is disabled at the time, verify the new certificate and reconfigure vSphere HA on
the host.
vSphere HA Admission Control

vSphere HA uses admission control to ensure that sufficient resources are reserved for virtual
machine recovery when a host fails.
Admission control imposes constraints on resource usage. Any action that might violate these
constraints is not permitted. Actions that might be disallowed include the following examples:
n Powering on a virtual machine
n Migrating a virtual machine
n Increasing the CPU or memory reservation of a virtual machine
The basis for vSphere HA admission control is how many host failures your cluster is allowed to
tolerate and still guarantee failover. The host failover capacity can be set in three ways:
n Cluster resource percentage
n Slot policy
n Dedicated failover hosts
Note vSphere HA admission control can be disabled. However, without it you have no assurance
that the expected number of virtual machines can be restarted after a failure. Do not
permanently disable admission control.
Regardless of the admission control option chosen, a VM resource reduction threshold also
exists. You use this setting to specify the percentage of resource degradation to tolerate, but it is
not available unless vSphere DRS is enabled.
VMware, Inc. 21
The resource reduction calculation is checked for both CPU and memory. It considers a virtual
machine's reserved memory and memory overload to decide whether to permit it to power on,
migrate, or have reservation changes. The actual memory consumed by the virtual machine is not
considered in the calculation because the memory reservation does not always correlate with the
actual memory usage of the virtual machine. If the actual usage is more than reserved memory,
insufficient failover capacity is available, resulting in performance degradation on failover.
Setting a performance reduction threshold enables you to specify the occurrence of a

configuration issue. For example:
n The default value is 100%, which produces no warnings.
n If you reduce the threshold to 0%, a warning is generated when cluster usage exceeds the
available capacity.
n If you reduce the threshold to 20%, the performance reduction that can be tolerated is
calculated as performance reduction = current utilization * 20%. When the current
usage minus the performance reduction exceeds the available capacity, a configuration
notice is issued.
Cluster Resources Percentage Admission Control

You can configure vSphere HA to perform admission control by reserving a specific percentage
of cluster CPU and memory resources for recovery from host failures.
With this type of admission control, vSphere HA ensures that a specified percentage of
aggregate CPU and memory resources are reserved for failover.
With the cluster resources percentage option, vSphere HA enforces admission control as follows:
1 Calculates the total resource requirements for all powered-on virtual machines in the cluster.
2 Calculates the total host resources available for virtual machines.
3 Calculates the Current CPU Failover Capacity and Current Memory Failover Capacity for the
cluster.
4 Determines if either the Current CPU Failover Capacity or Current Memory Failover Capacity
is less than the corresponding Configured Failover Capacity (provided by the user).
If so, admission control disallows the operation.
vSphere HA uses the actual reservations of the virtual machines. If a virtual machine does not
have reservations, meaning that the reservation is 0, a default of 0MB memory and 32MHz CPU is
applied.
Note The cluster resources percentage option for admission control also checks that there are
at least two vSphere HA-enabled hosts in the cluster (excluding hosts that are entering
maintenance mode). If there is only one vSphere HA-enabled host, an operation is not allowed,
even if there is a sufficient percentage of resources available. The reason for this extra check is
that vSphere HA cannot perform failover if there is only a single host in the cluster.
VMware, Inc. 22
Computing the Current Failover Capacity

The total resource requirements for the powered-on virtual machines is comprised of two
components, CPU and memory. vSphere HA calculates these values.
n The CPU component by summing the CPU reservations of the powered-on virtual machines. If
you have not specified a CPU reservation for a virtual machine, it is assigned a default value
of 32MHz (this value can be changed using the das.vmcpuminmhz advanced option.)
n The memory component by summing the memory reservation (plus memory overhead) of
each powered-on virtual machine.
The total host resources available for virtual machines is calculated by adding the hosts' CPU and
memory resources. These amounts are those contained in the host's root resource pool, not the
total physical resources of the host. Resources being used for virtualization purposes are not
included. Only hosts that are connected, not in maintenance mode, and have no vSphere HA
errors are considered.
The Current CPU Failover Capacity is computed by subtracting the total CPU resource
requirements from the total host CPU resources and dividing the result by the total host CPU
resources. The Current Memory Failover Capacity is calculated similarly.
Example: Admission Control Using Cluster Resources Percentage

The way that Current Failover Capacity is calculated and used with this admission control policy
is shown with an example. Make the following assumptions about a cluster:
n The cluster is comprised of three hosts, each with a different amount of available CPU and
memory resources. The first host (H1) has 9GHz of available CPU resources and 9GB of
available memory, while Host 2 (H2) has 9GHz and 6GB and Host 3 (H3) has 6GHz and 6GB.
n There are five powered-on virtual machines in the cluster with differing CPU and memory
requirements. VM1 needs 2GHz of CPU resources and 1GB of memory, while VM2 needs 2GHz
and 1GB, VM3 needs 1GHz and 2GB, VM4 needs 1GHz and 1GB, and VM5 needs 1GHz and 1GB.
n The Configured Failover Capacity for CPU and Memory are both set to 25%.
VMware, Inc. 23
Figure 2-1. Admission Control Example with Percentage of Cluster Resources Reserved Policy
VM1 VM2 VM3 VM4 VM5
2GHz 2GHz 1GHz 1GHz 1GHz
1GB 1GB 2GB 1GB 1GB
total resource requirements
7GHz, 6GB
H1 H2 H3
9GHz 9GHz 6GHz
9GB 6GB 6GB
total host resources

24GHz, 21GB
The total resource requirements for the powered-on virtual machines is 7GHz and 6GB. The total
host resources available for virtual machines is 24GHz and 21GB. Based on this, the Current CPU
Failover Capacity is 70% ((24GHz - 7GHz)/24GHz). Similarly, the Current Memory Failover
Capacity is 71% ((21GB-6GB)/21GB).
Because the cluster's Configured Failover Capacity is set to 25%, 45% of the cluster's total CPU
resources and 46% of the cluster's memory resources are still available to power on additional
virtual machines.
Slot Policy Admission Control

With the slot policy option, vSphere HA admission control ensures that a specified number of
hosts can fail and sufficient resources remain in the cluster to fail over all the virtual machines
from those hosts.
Using the slot policy, vSphere HA performs admission control in the following way:
1 Calculates the slot size.
A slot is a logical representation of memory and CPU resources. By default, it is sized to

satisfy the requirements for any powered-on virtual machine in the cluster.
2 Determines how many slots each host in the cluster can hold.
3 Determines the Current Failover Capacity of the cluster.
This is the number of hosts that can fail and still leave enough slots to satisfy all of the
powered-on virtual machines.
4 Determines whether the Current Failover Capacity is less than the Configured Failover
Capacity (provided by the user).
VMware, Inc. 24
If it is, admission control disallows the operation.
Note You can set a specific slot size for both CPU and memory in the admission control section
of the vSphere HA settings in the vSphere Client.
Slot Size Calculation

vSphere HA Slot Size and Admission Control
bctid=ref:video_vsphere_slot_admission_control)
Slot size is comprised of two components, CPU and memory.
n vSphere HA calculates the CPU component by obtaining the CPU reservation of each
powered-on virtual machine and selecting the largest value. If you have not specified a CPU
reservation for a virtual machine, it is assigned a default value of 32MHz. You can change this
value by using the das.vmcpuminmhz advanced option.)
n vSphere HA calculates the memory component by obtaining the memory reservation, plus
memory overhead, of each powered-on virtual machine and selecting the largest value. There
is no default value for the memory reservation.
If your cluster contains any virtual machines that have much larger reservations than the others,
they will distort slot size calculation. To avoid this, you can specify an upper bound for the CPU
or memory component of the slot size by using the das.slotcpuinmhz or das.slotmeminmb
advanced options, respectively. See vSphere HA Advanced Options.
You can also determine the risk of resource fragmentation in your cluster by viewing the number
of virtual machines that require multiple slots. This can be calculated in the admission control
section of the vSphere HA settings in the vSphere Client. Virtual machines might require multiple
slots if you have specified a fixed slot size or a maximum slot size using advanced options.
Using Slots to Compute the Current Failover Capacity

After the slot size is calculated, vSphere HA determines each host's CPU and memory resources
that are available for virtual machines. These amounts are those contained in the host's root
resource pool, not the total physical resources of the host. The resource data for a host that is
used by vSphere HA can be found on the host's Summary tab on the vSphere Client. If all hosts
in your cluster are the same, this data can be obtained by dividing the cluster-level figures by the
number of hosts. Resources being used for virtualization purposes are not included. Only hosts
that are connected, not in maintenance mode, and that have no vSphere HA errors are
considered.
The maximum number of slots that each host can support is then determined. To do this, the
host’s CPU resource amount is divided by the CPU component of the slot size and the result is
rounded down. The same calculation is made for the host's memory resource amount. These two
numbers are compared and the smaller number is the number of slots that the host can support.
VMware, Inc. 25
The Current Failover Capacity is computed by determining how many hosts (starting from the
largest) can fail and still leave enough slots to satisfy the requirements of all powered-on virtual
machines.
Example: Admission Control Using Slot Policy

The way that slot size is calculated and used with this admission control policy is shown in an
example. Make the following assumptions about a cluster:
n The cluster is comprised of three hosts, each with a different amount of available CPU and
memory resources. The first host (H1) has 9GHz of available CPU resources and 9GB of
available memory, while Host 2 (H2) has 9GHz and 6GB and Host 3 (H3) has 6GHz and 6GB.
n There are five powered-on virtual machines in the cluster with differing CPU and memory
requirements. VM1 needs 2GHz of CPU resources and 1GB of memory, while VM2 needs 2GHz
and 1GB, VM3 needs 1GHz and 2GB, VM4 needs 1GHz and 1GB, and VM5 needs 1GHz and 1GB.
n The Host Failures Cluster Tolerates is set to one.
Figure 2-2. Admission Control Example with Host Failures Cluster Tolerates Policy
VM1 VM2 VM3 VM4 VM5
2GHz 2GHz 1GHz 1GHz 1GHz
1GB 1GB 2GB 1GB 1GB
slot size
2GHz, 2GB
H1 H2 H3
9GHz 9GHz 6GHz
9GB 6GB 6GB
4 slots 3 slots 3 slots
6 slots remaining
if H1 fails
1 Slot size is calculated by comparing both the CPU and memory requirements of the virtual
machines and selecting the largest.
The largest CPU requirement (shared by VM1 and VM2) is 2GHz, while the largest memory
requirement (for VM3) is 2GB. Based on this, the slot size is 2GHz CPU and 2GB memory.
2 Maximum number of slots that each host can support is determined.
H1 can support four slots. H2 can support three slots (which is the smaller of 9GHz/2GHz and
6GB/2GB) and H3 can also support three slots.
3 Current Failover Capacity is computed.
VMware, Inc. 26
The largest host is H1 and if it fails, six slots remain in the cluster, which is sufficient for all five
of the powered-on virtual machines. If both H1 and H2 fail, only three slots remain, which is
insufficient. Therefore, the Current Failover Capacity is one.
The cluster has one available slot (the six slots on H2 and H3 minus the five used slots).
Dedicated Failover Hosts Admission Control

You can configure vSphere HA to designate specific hosts as the failover hosts.
With dedicated failover hosts admission control, when a host fails, vSphere HA attempts to
restart its virtual machines on any of the specified failover hosts. If restarting the virtual machines
is not possible, for example the failover hosts have failed or have insufficient resources, then
vSphere HA attempts to restart those virtual machines on other hosts in the cluster.
To ensure that spare capacity is available on a failover host, you are prevented from powering on
virtual machines or using vMotion to migrate virtual machines to a failover host. Also, DRS does
not use a failover host for load balancing.
Note If you use dedicated failover hosts admission control and designate multiple failover hosts,
DRS does not attempt to enforce VM-VM affinity rules for virtual machines that are running on
failover hosts.
vSphere HA Interoperability
vSphere HA can interoperate with many other features, such as DRS and vSAN.
Before configuring vSphere HA, you should be aware of the limitations of its interoperability with
these other features or products.
Using vSphere HA with vSAN

You can use vSAN as the shared storage for a vSphere HA cluster. If enabled, vSAN aggregates
the specified local storage disks available on the hosts into a single datastore shared by all hosts.
To use vSphere HA with vSAN, you must be aware of certain considerations and limitations for
the interoperability of these two features.
For information about vSAN, see Administering VMware vSAN.
Note You can use vSphere HA with vSAN stretched clusters.
ESXi Host Requirements

You can use vSAN with a vSphere HA cluster only if the following conditions are met:
n All the cluster's ESXi hosts must be version 5.5 or later.
n The cluster must have a minimum of three ESXi hosts.
VMware, Inc. 27
Networking Differences
vSAN has its own network. If vSAN and vSphere HA are enabled for the same cluster, the HA
interagent traffic flows over this storage network rather than the management network. vSphere
HA uses the management network only if vSAN is disabled. vCenter Server chooses the
appropriate network if vSphere HA is configured on a host.
Note You can enable vSAN only if vSphere HA is disabled.
If you change the vSAN network configuration, the vSphere HA agents do not automatically pick
up the new network settings. To make changes to the vSAN network, you must take the
following steps in the vSphere Client:
1 Disable Host Monitoring for the vSphere HA cluster.
2 Make the vSAN network changes.
3 Right-click all hosts in the cluster and select Reconfigure for vSphere HA.
4 Re-enable Host Monitoring for the vSphere HA cluster.
Table 2-2. vSphere HA Networking Differences shows the differences in vSphere HA networking
whether or not vSAN is used.
Table 2-2. vSphere HA Networking Differences

vSAN Enabled vSAN Disabled
Network used by vSphere HA vSAN storage network Management network
Heartbeat datastores Any datastore mounted to > 1 host, Any datastore mounted to > 1 host
but not vSAN datastores
Host declared isolated Isolation addresses not pingable and Isolation addresses not pingable and
vSAN storage network inaccessible management network inaccessible
Capacity Reservation Settings

When you reserve capacity for your vSphere HA cluster with an admission control policy, you
must coordinate this setting with the corresponding vSAN setting that ensures data accessibility
on failures. Specifically, the Number of Failures Tolerated setting in the vSAN rule set must not be
lower than the capacity that the vSphere HA admission control setting reserved.
For example, if the vSAN rule set allows for only two failures, the vSphere HA admission control
policy must reserve capacity that is equivalent to only one or two host failures. If you are using
the Percentage of Cluster Resources Reserved policy for a cluster that has eight hosts, you must
not reserve more than 25% of the cluster resources. In the same cluster, with the Host Failures
Cluster Tolerates policy, the setting must not be higher than two hosts. If vSphere HA reserves
less capacity, failover activity might be unpredictable. Reserving too much capacity overly
constrains the powering on of virtual machines and intercluster vSphere vMotion migrations.
VMware, Inc. 28
Using vSphere HA and DRS Together

Using vSphere HA with Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) combines automatic failover with
load balancing. This combination can result in a more balanced cluster after vSphere HA has
moved virtual machines to different hosts.
When vSphere HA performs failover and restarts virtual machines on different hosts, its first
priority is the immediate availability of all virtual machines. After the virtual machines have been
restarted, those hosts on which they were powered on might be heavily loaded, while other
hosts are comparatively lightly loaded. vSphere HA uses the virtual machine's CPU and memory
reservation and overhead memory to determine if a host has enough spare capacity to
accommodate the virtual machine.
In a cluster using DRS and vSphere HA with admission control turned on, virtual machines might
not be evacuated from hosts entering maintenance mode. This behavior occurs because of the
resources reserved for restarting virtual machines in the event of a failure. You must manually
migrate the virtual machines off of the hosts using vMotion.
In some scenarios, vSphere HA might not be able to fail over virtual machines because of
resource constraints. This can occur for several reasons.
n HA admission control is disabled and Distributed Power Management (DPM) is enabled. This
can result in DPM consolidating virtual machines onto fewer hosts and placing the empty
hosts in standby mode leaving insufficient powered-on capacity to perform a failover.
n VM-Host affinity (required) rules might limit the hosts on which certain virtual machines can
be placed.
n There might be sufficient aggregate resources but these can be fragmented across multiple
hosts so that they can not be used by virtual machines for failover.
In such cases, vSphere HA can use DRS to try to adjust the cluster (for example, by bringing
hosts out of standby mode or migrating virtual machines to defragment the cluster resources) so
that HA can perform the failovers.
If DPM is in manual mode, you might need to confirm host power-on recommendations. Similarly,
if DRS is in manual mode, you might need to confirm migration recommendations.
If you are using VM-Host affinity rules that are required, be aware that these rules cannot be
violated. vSphere HA does not perform a failover if doing so would violate such a rule.
For more information about DRS, see the vSphere Resource Management documentation.
Note vSphere DRS is a critical feature of vSphere which is required to maintain the health of the
workloads running inside vSphere Cluster. Starting with vSphere 7.0 Update 1, DRS depends on
the availability of vCLS VMs. See vSphere Cluster Services (vCLS) in vSphere Resource
Management for more information.
VMware, Inc. 29
vSphere HA and DRS Affinity Rules

If you create a DRS affinity rule for your cluster, you can specify how vSphere HA applies that
rule during a virtual machine failover.
The two types of rules for which you can specify vSphere HA failover behavior are the following:
n VM anti-affinity rules force specified virtual machines to remain apart during failover actions.
n VM-Host affinity rules place specified virtual machines on a particular host or a member of a
defined group of hosts during failover actions.
When you edit a DRS affinity rule, you must use vSphere HA advanced options to enforce the
desired failover behavior for vSphere HA.
n HA must respect VM anti-affinity rules during failover -- When the advanced option for VM
anti-affinity rules is set, vSphere HA does not fail over a virtual machine if doing so violates a
rule. Instead, vSphere HA issues an event reporting there are insufficient resources to
perform the failover.
n HA should respect VM to Host affinity rules during failover --vSphere HA attempts to place
VMs with this rule on the specified hosts if at all possible.
For more information, see vSphere HA Advanced Options.
Note vSphere HA can restart a VM in a DRS-disabled cluster, overriding a VM-Host affinity rules
mapping if the host failure happens soon (by default, within 5 minutes) after setting the rule.
Other vSphere HA Interoperability Issues

To use vSphere HA, you must be aware of the following additional interoperability issues.
VM Component Protection
VM Component Protection (VMCP) has the following interoperability issues and limitations:
n VMCP does not support vSphere Fault Tolerance. If VMCP is enabled for a cluster using Fault
Tolerance, the affected FT virtual machines will automatically receive overrides that disable
VMCP.
n VMCP does not detect or respond to accessibility issues for files located on vSAN datastores.
If a virtual machine's configuration and VMDK files are located only on vSAN datastores, they
are not protected by VMCP.
n VMCP does not detect or respond to accessibility issues for files located on Virtual Volume
datastores. If a virtual machine's configuration and VMDK files are located only on Virtual
Volume datastores, they are not protected by VMCP.
n VMCP does not protect against inaccessible Raw Device Mapping (RDM)s.
VMware, Inc. 30
IPv6
vSphere HA can be used with IPv6 network configurations, which are fully supported if the
following considerations are observed:
n The cluster contains only ESXi 6.0 or later hosts.
n The management network for all hosts in the cluster must be configured with the same IP
version, either IPv6 or IPv4. vSphere HA clusters cannot contain both types of networking
configuration.
n The network isolation addresses used by vSphere HA must match the IP version used by the
cluster for its management network.
n IPv6 cannot be used in vSphere HA clusters that also utilize vSAN.
In addition to the previous restrictions, the following types of IPv6 address types are not
supported for use with the vSphere HA isolation address or management network: link-local,
ORCHID, and link-local with zone indices. Also, the loopback address type cannot be used for the
management network.
Note To upgrade an existing IPv4 deployment to IPv6, you must first disable vSphere HA.
Creating a vSphere HA Cluster

vSphere HA operates in the context of a cluster of ESXi (or legacy ESX) hosts. You must create a
cluster, populate it with hosts, and configure vSphere HA settings before failover protection can
be established.
When you create a vSphere HA cluster, you must configure a number of settings that determine
how the feature works. Before you do this, identify your cluster's nodes. These nodes are the
ESXi hosts that will provide the resources to support virtual machines and that vSphere HA will
use for failover protection. You should then determine how those nodes are to be connected to
one another and to the shared storage where your virtual machine data resides. After that
networking architecture is in place, you can add the hosts to the cluster and finish configuring
vSphere HA.
You can enable and configure vSphere HA before you add host nodes to the cluster. However,
until the hosts are added, your cluster is not fully operational and some of the cluster settings are
unavailable. For example, the Specify a Failover Host admission control policy is unavailable until
there is a host that can be designated as the failover host.
Note The Virtual Machine Startup and Shutdown (automatic startup) feature is disabled for all
virtual machines residing on hosts that are in (or moved into) a vSphere HA cluster. Automatic
startup is not supported when used with vSphere HA.
vSphere HA Checklist
The vSphere HA checklist contains requirements that you must be aware of before creating and
using a vSphere HA cluster.
VMware, Inc. 31
Review this list before you set up a vSphere HA cluster. For more information, follow the
appropriate cross reference.
n All hosts must be licensed for vSphere HA.
n A cluster must contain at least two hosts.
n All hosts must be configured with static IP addresses. If you are using DHCP, you must ensure
that the address for each host persists across reboots.
n All hosts must have at least one management network in common. The best practice is to
have at least two management networks in common. You should use the VMkernel network
with the Management traffic checkbox enabled. The networks must be accessible to each
other and vCenter Server and the hosts must be accessible to each other on the
management networks. SeeBest Practices for Networking.
n To ensure that any virtual machine can run on any host in the cluster, all hosts must have
access to the same virtual machine networks and datastores. Similarly, virtual machines must
be located on shared, not local, storage otherwise they cannot be failed over in the case of a
host failure.
Note vSphere HA uses datastore heartbeating to distinguish between partitioned, isolated,

and failed hosts. So if some datastores are more reliable in your environment, configure
vSphere HA to give preference to them.
n For VM Monitoring to work, VMware tools must be installed. See VM and Application
Monitoring.
n vSphere HA supports both IPv4 and IPv6. See Other vSphere HA Interoperability Issues for
considerations when using IPv6.
n For VM Component Protection to work, hosts must have the All Paths Down (APD) Timeout
feature enabled.
n To use VM Component Protection, clusters must contain ESXi 6.0 hosts or later.
n Only vSphere HA clusters that contain ESXi 6.0 or later hosts can be used to enable VMCP.
Clusters that contain hosts from an earlier release cannot enable VMCP, and such hosts
cannot be added to a VMCP-enabled cluster.
n If your cluster uses Virtual Volume datastores, when vSphere HA is enabled a configuration
Virtual Volume is created on each datastore by vCenter Server. In these containers, vSphere
HA stores the files it uses to protect virtual machines. vSphere HA does not function correctly
if you delete these containers. Only one container is created per Virtual Volume datastore.
Create a vSphere HA Cluster in the vSphere Client

To enable your cluster for vSphere HA, you must first create an empty cluster. After you plan the
resources and networking architecture of your cluster, use the vSphere Client to add hosts to the
cluster and specify the cluster's vSphere HA settings.
A vSphere HA-enabled cluster is a prerequisite for vSphere Fault Tolerance.
VMware, Inc. 32
Prerequisites
n Verify that all virtual machines and their configuration files reside on shared storage.
n Verify that the hosts are configured to access the shared storage so that you can power on
the virtual machines by using different hosts in the cluster.
n Verify that hosts are configured to have access to the virtual machine network.
n Verify that you are using redundant management network connections for vSphere HA. For
information about setting up network redundancy, see Best Practices for Networking.
n Verify that you have configured hosts with at least two datastores to provide redundancy for
vSphere HA datastore heartbeating.
n Connect vSphere Client to vCenter Server by using an account with cluster administrator
permissions.
Procedure
1 In the vSphere Client, browse to the data center where you want the cluster to reside and
click New Cluster.
2 Complete the New Cluster wizard.
Do not turn on vSphere HA (or DRS).
3 Click OK to close the wizard and create an empty cluster.
4 Based on your plan for the resources and networking architecture of the cluster, use the
vSphere Client to add hosts to the cluster.
5 Browse to the cluster and enable vSphere HA.
a Click the Configure tab.
b Select vSphere Availability and click Edit.
c Select vSphere HA.
6 Under Failures and Responses select Enable Host Monitoring.
With Host Monitoring enabled, hosts in the cluster can exchange network heartbeats and
vSphere HA can take action when it detects failures. Host Monitoring is required for the
vSphere Fault Tolerance recovery process to work properly.
7 Select a setting for VM Monitoring.
Select VM Monitoring Only to restart individual virtual machines if their heartbeats are not
received within a set time. You can also select VM and Application Monitoring to enable
application monitoring.
8 Click OK.
Results
You have a vSphere HA cluster, populated with hosts.
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What to do next
Configure the appropriate vSphere HA settings for your cluster.
n Failures and responses
n Admission Control
n Heartbeat Datastores
n Advanced Options
See Configuring vSphere Availability Settings.
Configuring vSphere Availability Settings

When you create a vSphere HA cluster or configure an existing cluster, you must configure
settings that determine how the feature works.
In the vSphere Client, you can configure following the vSphere HA settings:
Failures and responses
Provide settings here for host failure responses, host isolation, VM monitoring, and VM
Component Protection.
Admission Control
Enable or disable admission control for the vSphere HA cluster and choose a policy for how it
is enforced.
Heartbeat Datastores
Specify preferences for the datastores that vSphere HA uses for datastore heartbeating.
Advanced Options
Customize vSphere HA behavior by setting advanced options.
Configuring Responses to Failures

The Failure and Responses pane of the vSphere HA settings allows you to configure how your
cluster should function when problems are encountered.
In this part of the vSphere Client, you can determine the specific responses the vSphere HA
cluster has for host failures and isolation. You can also configure VM Component Protection
(VMCP) actions when Permanent Device Loss (PDL) and All Paths Down (APD) situations occur
and you can enable VM monitoring.
The following tasks are available:
Procedure
1 Respond to Host Failure

You can set specific responses to host failures that occur in your vSphere HA cluster.
VMware, Inc. 34
2 Respond to Host Isolation

You can set specific responses to host isolation that occurs in your vSphere HA cluster.
3 Configure VMCP Responses

Configure the response that VM Component Protection (VMCP) makes when a datastore
encounters a PDL or APD failure.
4 Enable VM Monitoring
You can turn on VM and Application Monitoring and also set the monitoring sensitivity for
your vSphere HA cluster.
Respond to Host Failure

You can set specific responses to host failures that occur in your vSphere HA cluster.
This page is editable only if you have enabled vSphere HA.
Procedure
1 In the vSphere Client, browse to the vSphere HA cluster.
2 Click the Configure tab.
3 Select vSphere Availability and click Edit.
4 Click Failures and Responses and then expand Host Failure Response.
5 Select from the following configuration options.
Option Description
Failure Response If you select Disabled, this setting turns off host monitoring and VMs are not
restarted when host failures occur. If Restart VMs is selected, VMs are failed
over based on their restart priority when a host fails.
Default VM Restart Priority The restart priority determines the order in which virtual machines are
restarted when the host fails. Higher priority virtual machines are started
first. If multiple hosts fail, all virtual machines are migrated from the first host
in order of priority, then all virtual machines from the second host in order of
priority, and so on.
VM Restart Priority Condition A specific condition must be selected as well as a delay after that condition
has been met, before vSphere HA is allowed to continue to the next VM
restart priority.
6 Click OK.
Results
Your settings for the host failure response take effect.
Respond to Host Isolation

You can set specific responses to host isolation that occurs in your vSphere HA cluster.
VMware, Inc. 35
Procedure
4 Click Failures and Responses and expand Response for Host Isolation.
5 To configure the host isolation response, select Disabled, Shut down and restart VMs, or
Power off and restart VMs.
6 Click OK.
Results
Your setting for the host isolation response takes effect.
Configure VMCP Responses

Configure the response that VM Component Protection (VMCP) makes when a datastore
encounters a PDL or APD failure.
Procedure
4 Click Failures and Responses, and expand either Datastore with PDL or Datastore with
APD .
5 If you clicked Datastore with PDL, you can set the VMCP failure response for this type of
issue, either Disabled, Issue Events, or Power off and restart VMs.
6 If you clicked Datastore with APD, you can set the VMCP failure response for this type of
issue, either Disabled, Issue Events, Power off and restart VMs--Conservative restart policy,
or Power off and restart VMs--Aggressive restart policy. You can also set Response
recovery, which is the number of minutes that VMCP waits before taking action.
7 Click OK.
Results
Your settings for the VMCP failure response take effect.
Enable VM Monitoring
You can turn on VM and Application Monitoring and also set the monitoring sensitivity for your
vSphere HA cluster.
VMware, Inc. 36
Procedure
4 Click Failures and Responses and expand VM Monitoring.
5 Select VM Monitoring and Application Monitoring.
These settings turn on VMware Tools heartbeats and application heartbeats, respectively.
6 To set the heartbeat monitoring sensitivity, move the slider between Low and High or select
Custom to provide custom settings.
7 Click OK.
Results
Your monitoring settings take effect.
Configure Proactive HA
You can configure how Proactive HA responds when a provider has notified its health
degradation to vCenter, indicating a partial failure of that host.
This page is editable only if you have enabled vSphere DRS.
Procedure
1 In the vSphere Client, browse to the Proactive HA cluster.
4 Select Turn on Proactive HA.
5 Click Proactive HA Failures and Responses.
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6 Select from the following configuration options.
Option Description
Automation Level Determine whether host quarantine or maintenance mode and VM

migrations are recommendations or automatic.
n Manual. vCenter Server suggests migration recommendations for virtual
machines.
n Automated. Virtual machines are migrated to healthy hosts and
degraded hosts are entered into quarantine or maintenance mode
depending on the configured Proactive HA automation level.
Remediation Determine what happens to partially degraded hosts.

n Quarantine mode for all failures. Balances performance and availability,
by avoiding the usage of partially degraded hosts provided that virtual
machine performance is unaffected.
n Quarantine mode for moderate and Maintenance mode for severe
failure (Mixed). Balances performance and availability, by avoiding the
usage of moderately degraded hosts provided that virtual machine
performance is unaffected. Ensures that virtual machines do not run on
severely failed hosts.
n Maintenance mode for all failures. Ensures that virtual machines do not
run on partially failed hosts.
Host.Config.Quarantine and Host.Config.Maintenance privileges are
required to put hosts in Quarantine mode and Maintenance mode,
respectively.
To enable Proactive HA providers for this cluster, select the check boxes. Providers appear
when their corresponding vSphere Client plugin has been installed and the providers monitor
every host in the cluster. To view or edit the failure conditions supported by the provider,
click the edit link.
7 Click OK.
Configure Admission Control

After you create a cluster, you can configure admission control to specify whether virtual
machines can be started if they violate availability constraints. The cluster reserves resources so
that failover can occur for all running virtual machines on the specified number of hosts.
The Admission Control page appears only if you enabled vSphere HA.
Procedure
4 Click Admission Control to display the configuration options.
5 Select a number for the Host failures cluster tolerates. This is the maximum number of host
failures that the cluster can recover from or guarantees failover for.
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6 Select an option for Define host failover capacity by.
Option Description
Cluster resource percentage Specify a percentage of the cluster’s CPU and memory resources to reserve
as spare capacity to support failovers.
Slot Policy (powered-on VMs) Select a slot size policy that covers all powered on VMs or is a fixed size.
You can also calculate how many VMs require multiple slots.
Dedicated failover hosts Select hosts to use for failover actions. Failovers can still occur on other
hosts in the cluster if a default failover host does not have enough
resources.
Disabled Select this option to disable admission control and allow virtual machine
power ons that violate availability constraints.
7 Set the percentage for the Performance degradation VMs tolerate.
This setting determines what percentage of performance degradation the VMs in the cluster
are allowed to tolerate during a failure.
8 Click OK.
Results
Your admission control settings take effect.
Configure Heartbeat Datastores

vSphere HA uses datastore heartbeating to distinguish between hosts that have failed and hosts
that reside on a network partition. With datastore heartbeating, vSphere HA can monitor hosts
when a management network partition occurs and continue to respond to failures.
You can specify the datastores that you want to be used for datastore heartbeating.
Procedure
4 Click Heartbeat Datastores to display the configuration options for datastore heartbeating.
5 To instruct vSphere HA about how to select the datastores and how to treat your
preferences, select from the following options.
Table 2-3.
Datastore Heartbeating Options
Automatically select datastores accessible from the host
Use datastores only from the specified list
Use datastores from the specified list and complement automatically if needed
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6 In the Available heartbeat datastores pane, select the datastores that you want to use for
heartbeating.
The listed datastores are shared by more than one host in the vSphere HA cluster. When a
datastore is selected, the lower pane displays all the hosts in the vSphere HA cluster that can
access it.
7 Click OK.
Set Advanced Options

To customize vSphere HA behavior, set advanced vSphere HA options.
Prerequisites
Verify that you have cluster administrator privileges.
Note Because these options affect the functioning of vSphere HA, change them with caution.
Procedure
4 Click Advanced Options.
5 Click Add and type the name of the advanced option in the text box.
You can set the value of the option in the text box in the Value column.
6 Repeat step 5 for each new option that you want to add and click OK.
Results
The cluster uses the options that you added or modified.
What to do next
Once you have set an advanced vSphere HA option, it persists until you do one the following:
n Using the vSphere Client, reset its value to the default value.
n Manually edit or delete the option from the fdm.cfg file on all hosts in the cluster.
vSphere HA Advanced Options

You can set advanced options that affect the behavior of your vSphere HA cluster.
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Table 2-4. vSphere HA Advanced Options

Option Description
das.isolationaddress[...] Sets the address to ping to determine if a host is isolated

from the network. This address is pinged only when
heartbeats are not received from any other host in the
cluster. If not specified, the default gateway of the
management network is used. This default gateway has to
be a reliable address that is available, so that the host can
determine if it is isolated from the network. You can specify
multiple isolation addresses (up to 10) for the cluster:
das.isolationAddressX, where X = 0-9. Typically you should
specify one per management network. Specifying too
many addresses makes isolation detection take too long.
das.usedefaultisolationaddress By default, vSphere HA uses the default gateway of the

console network as an isolation address. This option
specifies whether or not this default is used (true|false).
das.isolationshutdowntimeout The period of time the system waits for a virtual machine to
shut down before powering it off. This only applies if the
host's isolation response is Shut down VM. Default value is
300 seconds.
das.slotmeminmb Defines the maximum bound on the memory slot size. If

this option is used, the slot size is the smaller of this value
or the maximum memory reservation plus memory
overhead of any powered-on virtual machine in the cluster.
das.slotcpuinmhz Defines the maximum bound on the CPU slot size. If this
option is used, the slot size is the smaller of this value or
the maximum CPU reservation of any powered-on virtual
machine in the cluster.
das.vmmemoryminmb Defines the default memory resource value assigned to a

virtual machine if its memory reservation is not specified or
zero. This is used for the Host Failures Cluster Tolerates
admission control policy. If no value is specified, the default
is 0 MB.
das.vmcpuminmhz Defines the default CPU resource value assigned to a

virtual machine if its CPU reservation is not specified or
zero. This is used for the Host Failures Cluster Tolerates
admission control policy. If no value is specified, the default
is 32MHz.
das.iostatsinterval Changes the default I/O stats interval for VM Monitoring

sensitivity. The default is 120 (seconds). Can be set to any
value greater than, or equal to 0. Setting to 0 disables the
check.
Note Values of less than 50 are not recommended since

smaller values can result in vSphere HA unexpectedly
resetting a virtual machine.
das.ignoreinsufficienthbdatastore Disables configuration issues created if the host does not

have sufficient heartbeat datastores for vSphere HA.
Default value is false.
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Table 2-4. vSphere HA Advanced Options (continued)

Option Description
das.heartbeatdsperhost Changes the number of heartbeat datastores required.

Valid values can range from 2-5 and the default is 2.
das.config.fdm.isolationPolicyDelaySec The number of seconds system waits before executing the

isolation policy once it is determined that a host is isolated.
The minimum value is 30. If set to a value less than 30, the
delay will be 30 seconds.
das.respectvmvmantiaffinityrules Determines if vSphere HA enforces VM-VM anti-affinity

rules. The default value is "true" and rules are enforced
even if vSphere DRS is not enabled. In this case, vSphere
HA does not fail over a virtual machine if doing so violates
a rule, but it issues an event reporting there are insufficient
resources to perform the failover. This option can also be
set to "false", whereby the rules are not enforced.
See vSphere Resource Management for more information
on anti-affinity rules.
das.maxresets The maximum number of reset attempts made by VMCP. If

a reset operation on a virtual machine affected by an APD
situation fails, VMCP retries the reset this many times
before giving up
das.maxterminates The maximum number of retries made by VMCP for virtual

machine termination.
das.terminateretryintervalsec If VMCP fails to terminate a virtual machine, this is the

number of seconds the system waits before it retries a
terminate attempt
das.config.fdm.reportfailoverfailevent When set to 1, enables generation of a detailed per-VM

event when an attempt by vSphere HA to restart a virtual
machine is unsuccessful. Default value is 0. In versions
earlier than vSphere 6.0, this event is generated by default.
vpxd.das.completemetadataupdateintervalsec The period of time (seconds) after a VM-Host affinity rule is

set during which vSphere HA can restart a VM in a DRS-
disabled cluster, overriding the rule. Default value is 300
seconds.
das.config.fdm.memReservationMB By default vSphere HA agents run with a configured

memory limit of 250 MB. A host might not allow this
reservation if it runs out of reservable capacity. You can
use this advanced option to lower the memory limit to
avoid this issue. Only integers greater than 100, which is
the minimum value, can be specified. Conversely, to
prevent problems during primary agent elections in a large
cluster (containing 6,000 to 8,000 VMs) you should raise
this limit to 325 MB.
Note Once this limit is changed, for all hosts in the cluster
you must run the Reconfigure HA task. Also, when a new
host is added to the cluster or an existing host is rebooted,
this task should be performed on those hosts in order to
update this memory setting.
VMware, Inc. 42
Table 2-4. vSphere HA Advanced Options (continued)

Option Description
das.reregisterrestartdisabledvms When vSphere HA is disabled on a specific VM this option

ensures that the VM is registered on another host after a
failure. This allows you to power-on that VM without
needing to re-register it manually.
Note When this option is used, vSphere HA does not

power on the VM, but only registers it.
das.respectvmhostsoftaffinityrules Determines if vSphere HA restarts a respective VM on a

host that belongs to the same VM-Host group. If no such
host is available or if the value of this option is set to
“false”, vSphere HA restarts the VM on any available host
in the cluster. In vSphere 6.5, the default value is "true".
This value might not be visibly defined in the advanced HA
options of the cluster. If you want to disable the option,
you must manually set this option as "false" in the
advanced HA options for the cluster.
Note If you change the value of any of the following advanced options, you must disable and
then re-enable vSphere HA before your changes take effect.
n das.isolationaddress[...]
n das.usedefaultisolationaddress
n das.isolationshutdowntimeout
Customize an Individual Virtual Machine

Each virtual machine in a vSphere HA cluster is assigned the cluster default settings for VM
Restart Priority, Host Isolation Response, VM Component Protection, and VM Monitoring. You can
specify specific behavior for each virtual machine by changing these defaults. If the virtual
machine leaves the cluster, these settings are lost.
Procedure
3 Under Configuration, select VM Overrides and click Add.
4 Use the + button to select virtual machines to which to apply the overrides.
5 Click OK.
VMware, Inc. 43
6 (Optional) You can change other settings, such as the Automation level, VM restart priority,
Response for Host Isolation, VMCP settings,VM Monitoring, or VM monitoring sensitivity
settings.
Note You can view the cluster defaults for these settings by first expanding Relevant
Cluster Settings and then expanding vSphere HA.
7 Click OK.
Results
The virtual machine’s behavior now differs from the cluster defaults for each setting that you
changed.
Best Practices for VMware vSphere® High Availability

Clusters
To ensure optimal vSphere HA cluster performance, you must follow certain best practices. This
section highlights some of the key best practices for a vSphere HA cluster.
You can also refer to the vSphere High Availability Deployment Best Practices publication for
further discussion.
Best Practices for Networking

Observe the following best practices for the configuration of host NICs and network topology for
vSphere HA. Best Practices include recommendations for your ESXi hosts, and for cabling,
switches, routers, and firewalls.
Network Configuration and Maintenance

The following network maintenance suggestions can help you avoid the accidental detection of
failed hosts and network isolation because of dropped vSphere HA heartbeats.
n When changing the networks that your clustered ESXi hosts are on, suspend the Host
Monitoring feature. Changing your network hardware or networking settings can interrupt the
heartbeats that vSphere HA uses to detect host failures, which might result in unwanted
attempts to fail over virtual machines.
n When you change the networking configuration on the ESXi hosts themselves, for example,
adding port groups, or removing vSwitches, suspend Host Monitoring. After you have made
the networking configuration changes, you must reconfigure vSphere HA on all hosts in the
cluster, which causes the network information to be reinspected. Then re-enable Host
Monitoring.
Note Because networking is a vital component of vSphere HA, if network maintenance must be
performed inform the vSphere HA administrator.
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Networks Used for vSphere HA Communications

To identify which network operations might disrupt the functioning of vSphere HA, you must
know which management networks are being used for heart beating and other vSphere HA
communications.
n On legacy ESX hosts in the cluster, vSphere HA communications travel over all networks that
are designated as service console networks. VMkernel networks are not used by these hosts
for vSphere HA communications. To contain vSphere HA traffic to a subset of the ESX
console networks, use the allowedNetworks advanced option.
n On ESXi hosts in the cluster, vSphere HA communications, by default, travel over VMkernel
networks. With an ESXi host, if you want to use a network other than the one vCenter Server
uses to communicate with the host for vSphere HA, you must explicitly enable the
Management traffic check box.
To keep vSphere HA agent traffic on the networks you have specified, configure hosts so
vmkNICs used by vSphere HA do not share subnets with vmkNICs used for other purposes.
vSphere HA agents send packets using any pNIC that is associated with a given subnet when
there is also at least one vmkNIC configured for vSphere HA management traffic. Therefore, to
ensure network flow separation, the vmkNICs used by vSphere HA and by other features must
be on different subnets.
Network Isolation Addresses

A network isolation address is an IP address that is pinged to determine whether a host is
isolated from the network. This address is pinged only when a host has stopped receiving
heartbeats from all other hosts in the cluster. If a host can ping its network isolation address, the
host is not network isolated, and the other hosts in the cluster have either failed or are network
partitioned. However, if the host cannot ping its isolation address, it is likely that the host has
become isolated from the network and no failover action is taken.
By default, the network isolation address is the default gateway for the host. Only one default
gateway is specified, regardless of how many management networks have been defined. Use the
das.isolationaddress[...] advanced option to add isolation addresses for additional networks.
See vSphere HA Advanced Options.
Network Path Redundancy

Network path redundancy between cluster nodes is important for vSphere HA reliability. A single
management network ends up being a single point of failure and can result in failovers although
only the network has failed. If you have only one management network, any failure between the
host and the cluster can cause an unnecessary (or false) failover activity if heartbeat datastore
connectivity is not retained during the networking failure. Possible failures include NIC failures,
network cable failures, network cable removal, and switch resets. Consider these possible
sources of failure between hosts and try to minimize them, typically by providing network
redundancy.
VMware, Inc. 45
The first way you can implement network redundancy is at the NIC level with NIC teaming. Using
a team of two NICs connected to separate physical switches improves the reliability of a
management network. Because servers connected through two NICs (and through separate
switches) have two independent paths for sending and receiving heartbeats, the cluster is more
resilient. To configure a NIC team for the management network, configure the vNICs in vSwitch
configuration for Active or Standby configuration. The recommended parameter settings for the
vNICs are:
n Default load balancing = route based on originating port ID
n Failback = No
After you have added a NIC to a host in your vSphere HA cluster, you must reconfigure vSphere
HA on that host.
In most implementations, NIC teaming provides sufficient heartbeat redundancy, but as an

alternative you can create a second management network connection attached to a separate
virtual switch. Redundant management networking allows the reliable detection of failures and
prevents isolation or partition conditions from occurring, because heartbeats can be sent over
multiple networks. The original management network connection is used for network and
management purposes. When the second management network connection is created, vSphere
HA sends heartbeats over both management network connections. If one path fails, vSphere HA
still sends and receives heartbeats over the other path.
Note Configure the fewest possible number of hardware segments between the servers in a
cluster. The goal being to limit single points of failure. Also, routes with too many hops can cause
networking packet delays for heartbeats, and increase the possible points of failure.
Using IPv6 Network Configurations

Only one IPv6 address can be assigned to a given network interface used by your vSphere HA
cluster. Assigning multiple IP addresses increases the number of heartbeat messages sent by the
cluster's primary host with no corresponding benefit.
Best Practices for Interoperability

Observe the following best practices for allowing interoperability between vSphere HA and other
features.
vSphere HA and Storage vMotion Interoperability in a Mixed Cluster

In clusters where ESXi 5.x hosts and ESX/ESXi 4.1 or earlier hosts are present and where Storage
vMotion is used extensively or Storage DRS is enabled, do not deploy vSphere HA. vSphere HA
might respond to a host failure by restarting a virtual machine on a host with an ESXi version
different from the one on which the virtual machine was running before the failure. A problem
can occur if, at the time of failure, the virtual machine was involved in a Storage vMotion action
on an ESXi 5.x host, and vSphere HA restarts the virtual machine on a host with a version earlier
than ESXi 5.0. While the virtual machine might power-on, any subsequent attempts at snapshot
operations might corrupt the vdisk state and leave the virtual machine unusable.
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Using Auto Deploy with vSphere HA

You can use vSphere HA and Auto Deploy together to improve the availability of your virtual
machines. Auto Deploy provisions hosts when they power-on and you can also configure it to
install the vSphere HA agent on hosts during the boot process. See the Auto Deploy
documentation included in vSphere Installation and Setup for details.
Upgrading Hosts in a Cluster Using vSAN

If you are upgrading the ESXi hosts in your vSphere HA cluster to version 5.5 or later, and you
also plan to use vSAN, follow this process.
1 Upgrade all of the hosts.
2 Disable vSphere HA.
3 Enable vSAN.
4 Re-enable vSphere HA.
Best Practices for Cluster Monitoring

Observe the following best practices for monitoring the status and validity of your vSphere HA
cluster.
Setting Alarms to Monitor Cluster Changes

When vSphere HA or Fault Tolerance take action to maintain availability, for example, a virtual
machine failover, you can be notified about such changes. Configure alarms in vCenter Server to
be triggered when these actions occur, and have alerts, such as emails, sent to a specified set of
administrators.
Several default vSphere HA alarms are available.
n Insufficient failover resources (a cluster alarm)
n Cannot find primary (a cluster alarm)
n Failover in progress (a cluster alarm)
n Host HA status (a host alarm)
n VM monitoring error (a virtual machine alarm)
n VM monitoring action (a virtual machine alarm)
n Failover failed (a virtual machine alarm)
Note The default alarms include the feature name, vSphere HA.
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Change in behavior for HA VIBs

In vSphere 7.0, it is possible the HA VIBs might be removed in some cases when HA is enabled
on a Lifecycle Managed (vLCM) cluster. In previous releases, vCenter would not attempt to
remove HA VIBs from ESXi hosts.
This situation can occur only on vLCM clusters with vSphere HA enabled. When a vLCM
Remediate operation occurs (either as a user-initiated operation or an API invocation) after
vSphere HA is disabled on the cluster, the vSphere HA VIBs might be removed as a
consequence.
Note This change in behavior is harmless because vCenter pushes the required vSphere HA
VIBs when HA is enabled again.
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Providing Fault Tolerance for
Virtual Machines 3
You can use vSphere Fault Tolerance for your virtual machines to ensure continuity with higher
levels of availability and data protection.
Fault Tolerance is built on the ESXi host platform, and it provides availability by having identical
virtual machines run on separate hosts.
To obtain the optimal results from Fault Tolerance you must be familiar with how it works, how to
enable it for your cluster, virtual machines and the best practices for its usage.
n How Fault Tolerance Works
n Fault Tolerance Use Cases
n Fault Tolerance Requirements, Limits, and Licensing
n Fault Tolerance Interoperability
n Preparing Your Cluster and Hosts for Fault Tolerance
n Using Fault Tolerance
n Enable Fault Tolerance Encryption
n Best Practices for Fault Tolerance
n Legacy Fault Tolerance
n Troubleshooting Fault Tolerant Virtual Machines
How Fault Tolerance Works

You can use vSphere Fault Tolerance (FT) for most mission critical virtual machines. FT provides
continuous availability for such a virtual machine by creating and maintaining another VM that is
identical and continuously available to replace it in the event of a failover situation.
The protected virtual machine is called the Primary VM. The duplicate virtual machine, the
Secondary VM, is created and runs on another host. The primary VM is continuously replicated to
the secondary VM so that the secondary VM can take over at any point, thereby providing Fault
Tolerant protection.
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The Primary and Secondary VMs continuously monitor the status of one another to ensure that
Fault Tolerance is maintained. A transparent failover occurs if the host running the Primary VM
fails, in which case the Secondary VM is immediately activated to replace the Primary VM. A new
Secondary VM is started and Fault Tolerance redundancy is reestablished automatically. If the
host running the Secondary VM fails, it is also immediately replaced. In either case, users
experience no interruption in service and no loss of data.
A fault tolerant virtual machine and its secondary copy are not allowed to run on the same host.
This restriction ensures that a host failure cannot result in the loss of both VMs.
Note You can also use VM-Host affinity rules to dictate which hosts designated virtual machines
can run on. If you use these rules, be aware that for any Primary VM that is affected by such a
rule, its associated Secondary VM is also affected by that rule. For more information about
affinity rules, see the vSphere Resource Management documentation.
Fault Tolerance avoids "split-brain" situations, which can lead to two active copies of a virtual
machine after recovery from a failure. Atomic file locking on shared storage is used to coordinate
failover so that only one side continues running as the Primary VM and a new Secondary VM is
respawned automatically.
vSphere Fault Tolerance can accommodate symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) virtual machines
with up to four vCPUs.
Fault Tolerance Use Cases

Several typical situations can benefit from the use of vSphere Fault Tolerance.
Fault Tolerance provides a higher level of business continuity than vSphere HA. When a
Secondary VM is called upon to replace its Primary VM counterpart, the Secondary VM
immediately takes over the Primary VM’s role with the entire state of the virtual machine
preserved. Applications are already running, and data stored in memory does not need to be
reentered or reloaded. Failover provided by vSphere HA restarts the virtual machines affected
by a failure.
This higher level of continuity and the added protection of state information and data informs the
scenarios when you might want to deploy Fault Tolerance.
n Applications which must always be available, especially applications that have long-lasting
client connections that users want to maintain during hardware failure.
n Custom applications that have no other way of doing clustering.
n Cases where high availability might be provided through custom clustering solutions, which
are too complicated to configure and maintain.
Another key use case for protecting a virtual machine with Fault Tolerance can be described as
On-Demand Fault Tolerance. In this case, a virtual machine is adequately protected with vSphere
HA during normal operation. During certain critical periods, you might want to enhance the
protection of the virtual machine. For example, you might be running a quarter-end report which,
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if interrupted, might delay the availability of critical information. With vSphere Fault Tolerance,
you can protect this virtual machine before running this report and then turn off or suspend Fault
Tolerance after the report has been produced. You can use On-Demand Fault Tolerance to
protect the virtual machine during a critical time period and return the resources to normal during
non-critical operation.
Fault Tolerance Requirements, Limits, and Licensing

Before using vSphere Fault Tolerance (FT), consider the high-level requirements, limits, and
licensing that apply to this feature.
Requirements
The following CPU and networking requirements apply to FT.
CPUs that are used in host machines for fault tolerant VMs must be compatible with vSphere
vMotion. Also, CPUs that support Hardware MMU virtualization (Intel EPT or AMD RVI) are
required. The following CPUs are supported.
n Intel Sandy Bridge or later. Avoton is not supported.
n AMD Bulldozer or later.
Use a 10-Gbit logging network for FT and verify that the network is low latency. A dedicated FT
network is highly recommended.
Limits
In a cluster configured to use Fault Tolerance, two limits are enforced independently.
das.maxftvmsperhost
The maximum number of fault tolerant VMs allowed on a host in the cluster. The default value
is 4. There is no FT VMs per host maximum, you can use larger numbers if the workload
performs well in FT VMs. You can disable checking by setting the value to 0.
das.maxftvcpusperhost
The maximum number of vCPUs aggregated across all fault tolerant VMs on a host. The
default value is 8. There is no FT vCPU per host maximum, you can use larger numbers if the
workload performs well. You can disable checking by setting the value to 0.
Licensing
The number of vCPUs supported by a single fault tolerant VM is limited by the level of licensing
that you have purchased for vSphere. Fault Tolerance is supported as follows:
n vSphere Standard and Enterprise. Allows up to 2 vCPUs
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n vSphere Enterprise Plus. Allows up to 8 vCPUs
Note FT is supported in vSphere Standard, vSphere Enterprise and vSphere Enterprise Plus
Editions.
Fault Tolerance Interoperability

Before configuring vSphere Fault Tolerance, you must be aware of the features and products
Fault Tolerance cannot interoperate with.
vSphere Features Not Supported with Fault Tolerance

When configuring your cluster, you should be aware that not all vSphere features can
interoperate with Fault Tolerance.
The following vSphere features are not supported for fault tolerant virtual machines.
n Snapshots. Snapshots must be removed or committed before Fault Tolerance can be enabled
on a virtual machine. In addition, it is not possible to take snapshots of virtual machines on
which Fault Tolerance is enabled.
Note Disk-only snapshots created for vStorage APIs - Data Protection (VADP) backups are
supported with Fault Tolerance. However, legacy FT does not support VADP.
n Storage vMotion. You cannot invoke Storage vMotion for virtual machines with Fault
Tolerance turned on. To migrate the storage, you should temporarily turn off Fault Tolerance,
and perform the storage vMotion action. When this is complete, you can turn Fault Tolerance
back on.
n Linked clones. You cannot use Fault Tolerance on a virtual machine that is a linked clone, nor
can you create a linked clone from an FT-enabled virtual machine.
n Virtual Volume datastores.
n Storage-based policy management. Storage policies are supported for vSAN storage.
n I/O filters.
n Disk encryption.
n TPM.
n VBS enabled VMs.
Features and Devices Incompatible with Fault Tolerance

Not all third party devices, features, or products can interoperate with Fault Tolerance.
For a virtual machine to be compatible with Fault Tolerance, the Virtual Machine must not use the
following features or devices.
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Table 3-1. Features and Devices Incompatible with Fault Tolerance and Corrective Actions
Incompatible Feature or Device Corrective Action
Physical Raw Disk mapping (RDM). With legacy FT you can reconfigure virtual machines with
physical RDM-backed virtual devices to use virtual RDMs
instead.
CD-ROM or floppy virtual devices backed by a physical or Remove the CD-ROM or floppy virtual device or
remote device. reconfigure the backing with an ISO installed on shared
storage.
USB and sound devices. Remove these devices from the virtual machine.
N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV). Disable the NPIV configuration of the virtual machine.
NIC passthrough. This feature is not supported by Fault Tolerance so it must

be turned off.
Hot-plugging devices. The hot plug feature is automatically disabled for fault
tolerant virtual machines. To hot plug devices (either
adding or removing), you must momentarily turn off Fault
Tolerance, perform the hot plug, and then turn on Fault
Tolerance.
Note When using Fault Tolerance, changing the settings

of a virtual network card while a virtual machine is running
is a hot-plug operation, since it requires "unplugging" the
network card and then "plugging" it in again. For example,
with a virtual network card for a running virtual machine, if
you change the network that the virtual NIC is connected
to, FT must be turned off first.
Serial or parallel ports Remove these devices from the virtual machine.
Video devices that have 3D enabled. Fault Tolerance does not support video devices that have
3D enabled.
Virtual Machine Communication Interface (VMCI) Not supported by Fault Tolerance.
2TB+ VMDK Fault Tolerance is not supported with a 2TB+ VMDK.
Using Fault Tolerance with DRS

You can use vSphere Fault Tolerance with vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS).
FT VMs do not require EVC to support DRS. You can use FT with DRS on vSphere 6.5 and 6.0
hosts that are managed by a vSphere 6.7 or higher VC.
Note vSphere DRS is a critical feature of vSphere which is required to maintain the health of the
workloads running inside vSphere Cluster. Starting with vSphere 7.0 Update 1, DRS depends on
the availability of vCLS VMs. See vSphere Cluster Services (vCLS) in vSphere Resource
Management for more information.
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Preparing Your Cluster and Hosts for Fault Tolerance

To enable vSphere Fault Tolerance for your cluster, you must meet the feature's prerequisites
and you must perform certain configuration steps on your hosts. After those steps are
accomplished and your cluster has been created, you can also check that your configuration
complies with the requirements for enabling Fault Tolerance.
The tasks you should complete before attempting to set up Fault Tolerance for your cluster
include the following:
n Ensure that your cluster, hosts, and virtual machines meet the requirements outlined in the
Fault Tolerance checklist.
n Configure networking for each host.
n Create the vSphere HA cluster, add hosts, and check compliance.
After your cluster and hosts are prepared for Fault Tolerance, you are ready to turn on Fault
Tolerance for your virtual machines. See Turn On Fault Tolerance.
Fault Tolerance Checklist

The following checklist contains cluster, host, and virtual machine requirements that you need to
be aware of before using vSphere Fault Tolerance.
Review this list before setting up Fault Tolerance.
Note The failover of fault tolerant virtual machines is independent of vCenter Server, but you
must use vCenter Server to set up your Fault Tolerance clusters.
Cluster Requirements for Fault Tolerance

You must meet the following cluster requirements before you use Fault Tolerance.
n Fault Tolerance logging and VMotion networking configured. See Configure Networking for
Host Machines.
n vSphere HA cluster created and enabled. See Creating a vSphere HA Cluster. vSphere HA
must be enabled before you can power on fault tolerant virtual machines or add a host to a
cluster that already supports fault tolerant virtual machines.
Host Requirements for Fault Tolerance

You must meet the following host requirements before you use Fault Tolerance.
n Hosts must use supported processors.
n Hosts must be licensed for Fault Tolerance.
n Hosts must be certified for Fault Tolerance. See http://www.vmware.com/resources/

compatibility/search.php and select Search by Fault Tolerant Compatible Sets to determine
if your hosts are certified.
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n The configuration for each host must have Hardware Virtualization (HV) enabled in the BIOS.
Note VMware recommends that the hosts you use to support FT VMs have their BIOS power
management settings turned to "Maximum performance" or "OS-managed performance".
To confirm the compatibility of the hosts in the cluster to support Fault Tolerance, you can also
run profile compliance checks as described in Create Cluster and Check Compliance.
Virtual Machine Requirements for Fault Tolerance

You must meet the following virtual machine requirements before you use Fault Tolerance.
n No unsupported devices attached to the virtual machine. See Fault Tolerance Interoperability.
n Incompatible features must not be running with the fault tolerant virtual machines. See Fault
Tolerance Interoperability.
n Virtual machine files (except for the VMDK files) must be stored on shared storage.
Acceptable shared storage solutions include Fibre Channel, (hardware and software) iSCSI,
vSAN, NFS, and NAS.
Other Configuration Recommendations

You should also observe the following guidelines when configuring Fault Tolerance.
n If you are using NFS to access shared storage, use dedicated NAS hardware with at least a
1Gbit NIC to obtain the network performance required for Fault Tolerance to work properly.
n The memory reservation of a fault tolerant virtual machine is set to the VM's memory size
when Fault Tolerance is turned on. Ensure that a resource pool containing fault tolerant VMs
has memory resources above the memory size of the virtual machines. Without this excess in
the resource pool, there might not be any memory available to use as overhead memory.
n To ensure redundancy and maximum Fault Tolerance protection, you should have a minimum
of three hosts in the cluster. In a failover situation, this provides a host that can accommodate
the new Secondary VM that is created.
Configure Networking for Host Machines

On each host that you want to add to a vSphere HA cluster, you must configure two different
networking switches (vMotion and FT logging) so that the host can support vSphere Fault
Tolerance.
To set up Fault Tolerance for a host, you must complete this procedure for each port group
option (vMotion and FT logging) to ensure that sufficient bandwidth is available for Fault
Tolerance logging. Select one option, finish this procedure, and repeat the procedure a second
time, selecting the other port group option.
Prerequisites
Multiple gigabit Network Interface Cards (NICs) are required. For each host supporting Fault
Tolerance, a minimum of two physical NICs is recommended. For example, you need one
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dedicated to Fault Tolerance logging and one dedicated to vMotion. Use three or more NICs to
ensure availability.
Procedure
1 In the vSphere Client, browse to the host.
2 Click the Configure tab and click Networking.
3 Select VMkernel adapters.
4 Click the Add Networking icon.
5 Provide appropriate information for your connection type.
6 Click Finish.
Results
After you create both a vMotion and Fault Tolerance logging virtual switch, you can create other
virtual switches, as needed. Add the host to the cluster and complete any steps needed to turn
on Fault Tolerance.
What to do next
Note If you configure networking to support FT but subsequently suspend the Fault Tolerance
logging port, pairs of fault tolerant virtual machines that are powered on remain powered on. If a
failover situation occurs, when the Primary VM is replaced by its Secondary VM a new Secondary
VM is not started, causing the new Primary VM to run in a Not Protected state.
Create Cluster and Check Compliance

vSphere Fault Tolerance is used in the context of a vSphere HA cluster. After you configure
networking on each host, create the vSphere HA cluster and add the hosts to it. You can check
to see whether the cluster is configured correctly and complies with the requirements for the
enablement of Fault Tolerance.
Procedure
1 In the vSphere Client, browse to the cluster.
2 Click the Monitor tab and click Profile Compliance.
3 Click Check Compliance Now to run the compliance tests.
Results
The results of the compliance test appear, and the compliance or noncompliance of each host is
shown.
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Using Fault Tolerance

After you have taken all of the required steps for enabling vSphere Fault Tolerance for your
cluster, you can use the feature by turning it on for individual virtual machines.
Before Fault Tolerance can be turned on, validation checks are performed on a virtual machine.
After these checks are passed and you turn on vSphere Fault Tolerance for a virtual machine,
new options are added to the Fault Tolerance section of its context menu. These include turning
off or disabling Fault Tolerance, migrating the Secondary VM, testing failover, and testing restart
of the Secondary VM.
Validation Checks for Turning On Fault Tolerance

If the option to turn on Fault Tolerance is available, this task still must be validated and can fail if
certain requirements are not met.
Several validation checks are performed on a virtual machine before Fault Tolerance can be
turned on.
n SSL certificate checking must be enabled in the vCenter Server settings.
n The host must be in a vSphere HA cluster or a mixed vSphere HA and DRS cluster.
n The host must have ESXi 6.x or greater installed.
n The virtual machine must not have snapshots.
n The virtual machine must not be a template.
n The virtual machine must not have vSphere HA disabled.
n The virtual machine must not have a video device with 3D enabled.
Checks for Powered-On Virtual Machines

Several additional validation checks are performed for powered-on virtual machines (or those
that are in the process of being powered on).
n The BIOS of the hosts where the fault tolerant virtual machines reside must have Hardware
Virtualization (HV) enabled.
n The host that supports the Primary VM must have a processor that supports Fault Tolerance.
n Your hardware should be certified as compatible with Fault Tolerance. To confirm that it is,
use the VMware Compatibility Guide at http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/
search.php and select Search by Fault Tolerant Compatible Sets.
n The configuration of the virtual machine must be valid for use with Fault Tolerance (for
example, it must not contain any unsupported devices).
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Secondary VM Placement
When your effort to turn on Fault Tolerance for a virtual machine passes the validation checks,
the Secondary VM is created. The placement and immediate status of the Secondary VM
depends upon whether the Primary VM was powered-on or powered-off when you turned on
Fault Tolerance.
If the Primary VM is powered on:
n The entire state of the Primary VM is copied and the Secondary VM is created, placed on a
separate compatible host, and powered on if it passes admission control.
n The Fault Tolerance Status displayed for the virtual machine is Protected.
If the Primary VM is powered off:
n The Secondary VM is immediately created and registered to a host in the cluster (it might be
re-registered to a more appropriate host when it is powered on.)
n The Secondary VM is not powered on until after the Primary VM is powered on.
n The Fault Tolerance Status displayed for the virtual machine is Not Protected, VM not
Running.
n When you attempt to power on the Primary VM after Fault Tolerance has been turned on,
the additional validation checks listed above are performed.
After these checks are passed, the Primary and Secondary VMs are powered on and placed
on separate, compatible hosts. The virtual machine's Fault Tolerance Status is tagged as
Protected.
Turn On Fault Tolerance

You can turn on vSphere Fault Tolerance through the vSphere Client.
When Fault Tolerance is turned on, vCenter Server resets the virtual machine's memory limit and
sets the memory reservation to the memory size of the virtual machine. While Fault Tolerance
remains turned on, you cannot change the memory reservation, size, limit, number of vCPUs, or
shares. You also cannot add or remove disks for the VM. When Fault Tolerance is turned off, any
parameters that were changed are not reverted to their original values.
Connect vSphere Client to vCenter Server using an account with cluster administrator
permissions.
Prerequisites
The option to turn on Fault Tolerance is unavailable (dimmed) if any of these conditions apply:
n The virtual machine resides on a host that does not have a license for the feature.
n The virtual machine resides on a host that is in maintenance mode or standby mode.
n The virtual machine is disconnected or orphaned (its .vmx file cannot be accessed).
n The user does not have permission to turn the feature on.
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Procedure
1 In the vSphere Client, browse to the virtual machine for which you want to turn on Fault
Tolerance.
2 Right-click the virtual machine and select Fault Tolerance > Turn On Fault Tolerance.
3 Click Yes.
4 Select a datastore on which to place the Secondary VM configuration files. Then click Next.
5 Select a host on which to place the Secondary VM. Then click Next.
6 Review your selections and then click Finish.
Results
The specified virtual machine is designated as a Primary VM, and a Secondary VM is established
on another host. The Primary VM is now fault tolerant.
Note The VM datastores and memory are replicated during the FT Turn On process. This can
take several minutes depending on the size of the replicated data. The VM state does not appear
as protected until replication is complete.
Turn Off Fault Tolerance

Turning off vSphere Fault Tolerance deletes the secondary virtual machine, its configuration, and
all history.
Use the Turn Off Fault Tolerance option if you do not plan to reenable the feature. Otherwise,
use the Suspend Fault Tolerance option.
Note If the Secondary VM resides on a host that is in maintenance mode, disconnected, or not
responding, you cannot use the Turn Off Fault Tolerance option. In this case, you should
suspend and resume Fault Tolerance instead.
Procedure
1 In the vSphere Client, browse to the virtual machine for which you want to turn off Fault
Tolerance.
2 Right-click the virtual machine and select Fault Tolerance > Turn Off Fault Tolerance.
3 Click Yes.
Results
Fault Tolerance is turned off for the selected virtual machine. The history and the secondary
virtual machine for the selected virtual machine are deleted.
Note Fault Tolerance cannot be turned off when the secondary VM is in the process of being
started. Since this involves syncing up the primary VM's full state to the secondary VM, this
process may take longer than expected.
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Suspend Fault Tolerance

Suspending vSphere Fault Tolerance for a virtual machine suspends its Fault Tolerance
protection, but preserves the Secondary VM, its configuration, and all history. Use this option to
resume Fault Tolerance protection in the future.
Procedure
1 In the vSphere Client, browse to the virtual machine for which you want to suspend Fault
Tolerance.
2 Right-click the virtual machine and select Fault Tolerance > Suspend Fault Tolerance.
3 Click Yes.
Results
Fault Tolerance is suspended for the selected virtual machine. Any history and the Secondary VM
for the selected virtual machine are preserved and will be used if the feature is resumed.
What to do next
After you suspend Fault Tolerance, to resume the feature select Resume Fault Tolerance.
Migrate Secondary
After vSphere Fault Tolerance is turned on for a Primary VM, you can migrate its associated
Secondary VM.
Procedure
1 In the vSphere Client, browse to the Primary VM for which you want to migrate its Secondary
VM.
2 Right-click the virtual machine and select Fault Tolerance > Migrate Secondary.
3 Complete the options in the Migrate dialog box and confirm the changes that you made.
4 Click Finish to apply the changes.
Results
The Secondary VM associated with the selected fault tolerant virtual machine is migrated to the
specified host.
Test Failover
You can induce a failover situation for a selected Primary VM to test your Fault Tolerance
protection.
This option is unavailable (dimmed) if the virtual machine is powered off.
Procedure
1 In the vSphere Client, browse to the Primary VM for which you want to test failover.
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2 Right-click the virtual machine and select Fault Tolerance > Test Failover.
3 View details about the failover in the Task Console.
Results
This task induces failure of the Primary VM to ensure that the Secondary VM replaces it. A new
Secondary VM is also started placing the Primary VM back in a Protected state.
Test Restart Secondary

You can induce the failure of a Secondary VM to test the Fault Tolerance protection provided for
a selected Primary VM.
This option is unavailable (dimmed) if the virtual machine is powered off.
Procedure
1 In the vSphere Client, browse to the Primary VM for which you want to conduct the test.
2 Right-click the virtual machine and select Fault Tolerance > Test Restart Secondary.
3 View details about the test in the Task Console.
Results
This task results in the termination of the Secondary VM that provided Fault Tolerance protection
for the selected Primary VM. A new Secondary VM is started, placing the Primary VM back in a
Protected state.
Upgrade Hosts Used for Fault Tolerance

Use the following procedure to upgrade hosts used for Fault Tolerance.
Prerequisites
Verify that you have cluster administrator privileges.
Verify that you have sets of four or more ESXi hosts that are hosting fault tolerant virtual
machines that are powered on. If the virtual machines are powered off, the Primary and
Secondary VMs can be relocated to hosts with different builds.
Note This upgrade procedure is for a minimum four-node cluster. The same instructions can be
followed for a smaller cluster, though the unprotected interval will be slightly longer.
Procedure
1 Using vMotion, migrate the fault tolerant virtual machines off of two hosts.
2 Upgrade the two evacuated hosts to the same ESXi build.
3 Suspend Fault Tolerance on the Primary VM.
4 Using vMotion, move the Primary VM for which Fault Tolerance has been suspended to one
of the upgraded hosts.
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5 Resume Fault Tolerance on the Primary VM that was moved.
6 Repeat Step 1 to Step 5 for as many fault tolerant virtual machine pairs as can be
accommodated on the upgraded hosts.
7 Using vMotion, redistribute the fault tolerant virtual machines.
Results
All ESXi hosts in a cluster are upgraded.
Enable Fault Tolerance Encryption

You can encrypt Fault Tolerance log traffic.
vSphere Fault Tolerance performs frequent checks between a primary VM and secondary VM so
that the secondary VM can quickly resume from the last successful checkpoint. The checkpoint
contains the VM state that has been modified since the previous checkpoint. You can encrypt
Fault Tolerance log traffic.
When you turn on Fault Tolerance, FT encryption is set to Opportunistic by default, which means
it enables encryption only if both the primary and secondary host are capable of encryption.
Follow this procedure if you need to change the FT encryption mode manually.
Prerequisites
FT encryption requires SMP-FT. Encryption on Legacy FT (Record-Replay FT) is not supported.
Procedure
1 Select the VM and choose Edit Settings.
2 Under VM Options select the Encrypted FT drop-down menu.
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3 Choose one of the following options:
Option Description
Disabled Do not turn on encrypted Fault Tolerance logging.
Opportunistic Turn on encryption only if both sides are capable. A Fault Tolerance VM is
allowed to move to an ESXi host which does not support encrypted Fault
Tolerance logging.
Required Choose hosts for Fault Tolerance primary and secondary that both support
encrypted FT logging.
Note While VM encryption is enabled, FT encryption mode is set to Required by default and
cannot be modified.
When FT encryption mode is set to Required:

n When you turn on FT, only FT encryption supported hosts are listed for the placement of
FT secondary.
n FT failover can only happen on the FT encryption supported hosts.
4 Click OK.
Best Practices for Fault Tolerance

To ensure optimal Fault Tolerance results, you should follow certain best practices.
The following recommendations for host and networking configuration can help improve the
stability and performance of your cluster.
Host Configuration
Hosts running the Primary and Secondary VMs should operate at approximately the same
processor frequencies, otherwise the Secondary VM might be restarted more frequently.
Platform power management features that do not adjust based on workload (for example, power
capping and enforced low frequency modes to save power) can cause processor frequencies to
vary greatly. If Secondary VMs are being restarted on a regular basis, disable all power
management modes on the hosts running fault tolerant virtual machines or ensure that all hosts
are running in the same power management modes.
Host Networking Configuration

The following guidelines allow you to configure your host's networking to support Fault
Tolerance with different combinations of traffic types (for example, NFS) and numbers of
physical NICs.
n Distribute each NIC team over two physical switches ensuring L2 domain continuity for each
VLAN between the two physical switches.
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n Use deterministic teaming policies to ensure particular traffic types have an affinity to a
particular NIC (active/standby) or set of NICs (for example, originating virtual port-id).
n Where active/standby policies are used, pair traffic types to minimize impact in a failover
situation where both traffic types will share a vmnic.
n Where active/standby policies are used, configure all the active adapters for a particular
traffic type (for example, FT Logging) to the same physical switch. This minimizes the number
of network hops and lessens the possibility of oversubscribing the switch to switch links.
Note FT logging traffic between Primary and Secondary VMs is unencrypted and contains guest
network and storage I/O data, as well as the memory contents of the guest operating system.
This traffic can include sensitive data such as passwords in plaintext. To avoid such data being
divulged, ensure that this network is secured, especially to avoid 'man-in-the-middle' attacks. For
example, you could use a private network for FT logging traffic.
Homogeneous Clusters
vSphere Fault Tolerance can function in clusters with nonuniform hosts, but it works best in
clusters with compatible nodes. When constructing your cluster, all hosts should have the
following configuration:
n Common access to datastores used by the virtual machines.
n The same virtual machine network configuration.
n The same BIOS settings (power management and hyperthreading) for all hosts.
Run Check Compliance to identify incompatibilities and to correct them.
Performance
To increase the bandwidth available for the logging traffic between Primary and Secondary VMs
use a 10Gbit NIC, and enable the use of jumbo frames.
You can select multiple NICs for the FT logging network. By selecting multiple NICs, you can take
advantage of the bandwidth from multiple NICs even if all of the NICs are not dedicated to
running FT.
Store ISOs on Shared Storage for Continuous Access

Store ISOs that are accessed by virtual machines with Fault Tolerance enabled on shared storage
that is accessible to both instances of the fault tolerant virtual machine. If you use this
configuration, the CD-ROM in the virtual machine continues operating normally, even when a
failover occurs.
Avoid Network Partitions

A network partition occurs when a vSphere HA cluster has a management network failure that
isolates some of the hosts from vCenter Server and from one another. See Network Partitions .
When a partition occurs, Fault Tolerance protection might be degraded.
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In a partitioned vSphere HA cluster using Fault Tolerance, the Primary VM (or its Secondary VM)
could end up in a partition managed by a primary host that is not responsible for the virtual
machine. When a failover is needed, a Secondary VM is restarted only if the Primary VM was in a
partition managed by the primary host responsible for it.
To ensure that your management network is less likely to have a failure that leads to a network
partition, follow the recommendations in Best Practices for Networking.
Using vSAN Datastores

vSphere Fault Tolerance can use vSAN datastores, but you must observe the following
restrictions:
n A mix of vSAN and other types of datastores is not supported for both Primary VMs and
Secondary VMs.
n vSAN metro clusters are not supported with FT.
To increase performance and reliability when using FT with vSAN, the following conditions are
also recommended.
n vSAN and FT should use separate networks.
n Keep Primary and Secondary VMs in separate vSAN fault domains.
Legacy Fault Tolerance

Legacy FT VMs can exist only on ESXi hosts that are running on vSphere versions earlier than
6.5.
ESXi hosts prior to version 6.5 supported vSphere Fault Tolerance based on a different
technology. If you are using this form of Fault Tolerance and need to continue doing so, we
recommend you reserve a vCenter 6.0 instance to manage the pool of pre-6.5 hosts required to
run these VMs. vCenter 6.0 was the last version fully capable of managing legacy FT protected
VMs. For more information on Legacy Fault Tolerance, see vSphere Availability 6.0
documentation.
Troubleshooting Fault Tolerant Virtual Machines

To maintain a high level of performance and stability for your fault tolerant virtual machines and
also to minimize failover rates, you should be aware of certain troubleshooting issues.
The troubleshooting topics discussed focus on problems that you might encounter when using
the vSphere Fault Tolerance feature on your virtual machines. The topics also describe how to
resolve problems.
You can also see the VMware knowledge base article at http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1033634 to
help you troubleshoot Fault Tolerance. This article contains a list of error messages that you
might encounter when you attempt to use the feature and, where applicable, advice on how to
resolve each error.
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Hardware Virtualization Not Enabled

You must enable Hardware Virtualization (HV) before you use vSphere Fault Tolerance.
Problem
When you attempt to power on a virtual machine with Fault Tolerance enabled, an error message
might appear if you did not enable HV.
Cause
This error is often the result of HV not being available on the ESXi server on which you are
attempting to power on the virtual machine. HV might not be available either because it is not
supported by the ESXi server hardware or because HV is not enabled in the BIOS.
Solution
If the ESXi server hardware supports HV, but HV is not currently enabled, enable HV in the BIOS
on that server. The process for enabling HV varies among BIOSes. See the documentation for
your hosts' BIOSes for details on how to enable HV.
If the ESXi server hardware does not support HV, switch to hardware that uses processors that
support Fault Tolerance.
Compatible Hosts Not Available for Secondary VM

If you power on a virtual machine with Fault Tolerance enabled and no compatible hosts are
available for its Secondary VM, you might receive an error message.
Problem
You might encounter the following error message:
Secondary VM could not be powered on as there are no compatible hosts that can accommodate it.
Cause
This can occur for a variety of reasons including that there are no other hosts in the cluster, there
are no other hosts with HV enabled, Hardware MMU Virtualization is not supported by host CPUs,
data stores are inaccessible, there is no available capacity, or hosts are in maintenance mode.
Solution
If there are insufficient hosts, add more hosts to the cluster. If there are hosts in the cluster,
ensure they support HV and that HV is enabled. The process for enabling HV varies among
BIOSes. See the documentation for your hosts' BIOSes for details on how to enable HV. Check
that hosts have sufficient capacity and that they are not in maintenance mode.
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Secondary VM on Overcommitted Host Degrades Performance of

Primary VM
If a Primary VM appears to be executing slowly, even though its host is lightly loaded and retains
idle CPU time, check the host where the Secondary VM is running to see if it is heavily loaded.
Problem
When a Secondary VM resides on a host that is heavily loaded, the Secondary VM can affect the
performance of the Primary VM.
Cause
A Secondary VM running on a host that is overcommitted (for example, with its CPU resources)
might not get the same amount of resources as the Primary VM. When this occurs, the Primary
VM must slow down to allow the Secondary VM to keep up, effectively reducing its execution
speed to the slower speed of the Secondary VM.
Solution
If the Secondary VM is on an overcommitted host, you can move the VM to another location
without resource contention problems. Or more specifically, do the following:
n For FT networking contention, use vMotion technology to move the Secondary VM to a host
with fewer FT VMs contending on the FT network. Verify that the quality of the storage
access to the VM is not asymmetric.
n For storage contention problems, turn FT off and on again. When you recreate the
Secondary VM, change its datastore to a location with less resource contention and better
performance potential.
n To resolve a CPU resources problem, set an explicit CPU reservation for the Primary VM at an
MHz value sufficient to run its workload at the desired performance level. This reservation is
applied to both the Primary and Secondary VMs, ensuring that both VMs can execute at a
specified rate. For guidance in setting this reservation, view the performance graphs of the
virtual machine (before Fault Tolerance was enabled) to see how many CPU resources it used
under normal conditions.
Increased Network Latency Observed in FT Virtual Machines

If your FT network is not optimally configured, you might experience latency problems with the
FT VMs.
Problem
FT VMs might see a variable increase in packet latency (on the order of milliseconds).
Applications that demand very low network packet latency or jitter (for example, certain real-
time applications) might see a degradation in performance.
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Cause
Some increase in network latency is expected overhead for Fault Tolerance, but certain factors
can add to this latency. For example, if the FT network is on a particularly high latency link, this
latency is passed on to the applications. Also, if the FT network has insufficient bandwidth (fewer
than 10 Gbps), greater latency might occur.
Solution
Verify that the FT network has sufficient bandwidth (10 Gbps or more) and uses a low latency link
between the Primary VM and Secondary VM. These precautions do not eliminate network
latency, but minimize its potential impact.
Some Hosts Are Overloaded with FT Virtual Machines

You might encounter performance problems if your cluster's hosts have an imbalanced
distribution of FT VMs.
Problem
Some hosts in the cluster might become overloaded with FT VMs, while other hosts might have
unused resources.
Cause
vSphere DRS does not load balance FT VMs (unless they are using legacy FT). This limitation
might result in a cluster where hosts are unevenly distributed with FT VMs.
Solution
Manually rebalance the FT VMs across the cluster by using vSphere vMotion. Generally, the fewer
FT VMs that are on a host, the better they perform, due to reduced contention for FT network
bandwidth and CPU resources.
Losing Access to FT Metadata Datastore

Access to the Fault Tolerance metadata datastore is essential for the proper functioning of an FT
VM. Loss of this access can cause a variety of problems.
Problem
These problems include the following:
n FT can terminate unexpectedly.
n If both the Primary VM and Secondary VM cannot access the metadata datastore, the VMs
might fail unexpectedly. Typically, an unrelated failure that terminates FT must also occur
when access to the FT metadata datastore is lost by both VMs. vSphere HA then tries to
restart the Primary VM on a host with access to the metadata datastore.
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n The VM might stop being recognized as an FT VM by vCenter Server. This failed recognition
can allow unsupported operations such as taking snapshots to be performed on the VM and
cause problematic behavior.
Cause
Lack of access to the Fault Tolerance metadata datastore can lead to the undesirable outcomes
in the previous list.
Solution
When planning your FT deployment, place the metadata datastore on highly available storage.
While FT is running, if you see that the access to the metadata datastore is lost on either the
Primary VM or the Secondary VM, promptly address the storage problem before loss of access
causes one of the previous problems. If a VM stops being recognized as an FT VM by vCenter
Server, do not perform unsupported operations on the VM. Restore access to the metadata
datastore. After access is restored for the FT VMs and the refresh period has ended, the VMs are
recognizable.
Turning On vSphere FT for Powered-On VM Fails

If you try to turn on vSphere Fault Tolerance for a powered-on VM, this operation can fail.
Problem
When you select Turn On Fault Tolerance for a powered-on VM, the operation fails and you see
an Unknown error message.
Cause
This operation can fail if the host that the VM is running on has insufficient memory resources to
provide fault tolerant protection. vSphere Fault Tolerance automatically tries to allocate a full
memory reservation on the host for the VM. Overhead memory is required for fault tolerant VMs
and can sometimes expand to 1 to 2 GB. If the powered-on VM is running on a host that has
insufficient memory resources to accommodate the full reservation plus the overhead memory,
trying to turn on Fault Tolerance fails. Subsequently, the Unknown error message is returned.
Solution
Choose from these solutions:
n Free up memory resources on the host to accommodate the VM's memory reservation and
the added overhead.
n Move the VM to a host with ample free memory resources and try again.
FT Virtual Machines not Placed or Evacuated by vSphere DRS

FT virtual machines in a cluster that is enabled with vSphere DRS do not function correctly if
Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) is currently disabled.
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Problem
Because EVC is a prerequisite for using DRS with FT VMs, DRS does not place or evacuate them
if EVC has been disabled (even if it is later reenabled).
Cause
When EVC is disabled on a DRS cluster, a VM override that disables DRS on an FT VM might be
added. Even if EVC is later reenabled, this override is not canceled.
Solution
If DRS does not place or evacuate FT VMs in the cluster, check the VMs for a VM override that is
disabling DRS. If you find one, remove the override that is disabling DRS.
Note For more information on how to edit or delete VM overrides, see vSphere Resource
Management.
Fault Tolerant Virtual Machine Failovers

A Primary or Secondary VM can fail over even though its ESXi host has not crashed. In such
cases, virtual machine execution is not interrupted, but redundancy is temporarily lost. To avoid
this type of failover, be aware of some of the situations when it can occur and take steps to
avoid them.
Partial Hardware Failure Related to Storage

This problem can arise when access to storage is slow or down for one of the hosts. When this
occurs there are many storage errors listed in the VMkernel log. To resolve this problem you
must address your storage-related problems.
Partial Hardware Failure Related to Network

If the logging NIC is not functioning or connections to other hosts through that NIC are down, this
can trigger a fault tolerant virtual machine to be failed over so that redundancy can be
reestablished. To avoid this problem, dedicate a separate NIC each for vMotion and FT logging
traffic and perform vMotion migrations only when the virtual machines are less active.
Insufficient Bandwidth on the Logging NIC Network

This can happen because of too many fault tolerant virtual machines being on a host. To resolve
this problem, more broadly distribute pairs of fault tolerant virtual machines across different
hosts.
Use a10-Gbit logging network for FT and verify that the network is low latency.
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vMotion Failures Due to Virtual Machine Activity Level

If the vMotion migration of a fault tolerant virtual machine fails, the virtual machine might need to
be failed over. Usually, this occurs when the virtual machine is too active for the migration to be
completed with only minimal disruption to the activity. To avoid this problem, perform vMotion
migrations only when the virtual machines are less active.
Too Much Activity on VMFS Volume Can Lead to Virtual Machine Failovers
When a number of file system locking operations, virtual machine power ons, power offs, or
vMotion migrations occur on a single VMFS volume, this can trigger fault tolerant virtual machines
to be failed over. A symptom that this might be occurring is receiving many warnings about SCSI
reservations in the VMkernel log. To resolve this problem, reduce the number of file system
operations or ensure that the fault tolerant virtual machine is on a VMFS volume that does not
have an abundance of other virtual machines that are regularly being powered on, powered off,
or migrated using vMotion.
Lack of File System Space Prevents Secondary VM Startup

Check whether or not your /(root) or /vmfs/datasource file systems have available space. These
file systems can become full for many reasons, and a lack of space might prevent you from being
able to start a new Secondary VM.
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vCenter High Availability
4
vCenter High Availability (vCenter HA) protects vCenter Server against host and hardware
failures. The active-passive architecture of the solution can also help you reduce downtime
significantly when you patch vCenter Server.
After some network configuration, you create a three-node cluster that contains Active, Passive,
and Witness nodes. Different configuration paths are available. What you select depends on your
existing configuration.
Procedure
1 Plan the vCenter HA Deployment

Before you can configure vCenter HA, you have to consider several factors. A deployment
with components that use different versions of vSphere requires different considerations
than a deployment that includes only vSphere 7.0 components. Resource and software
requirements and the networking setup must also be considered carefully.
2 Configure the Network

Regardless of the deployment option and inventory hierarchy that you select, you have to
set up your network before you can start configuration. To set the foundation for the
vCenter HA network, you add a port group to each ESXi host.
3 Configure vCenter HA With the vSphere Client

When you use the vSphere Client, the Set Up vCenter HA wizard creates and configures a
second network adapter on the vCenter Server, clones the Active node, and configures the
vCenter HA network.
4 Manage the vCenter HA Configuration

After you configure your vCenter HA cluster, you can perform management tasks. These
tasks include certificate replacement, replacement of SSH keys, and SNMP setup. You can
also edit the cluster configuration to disable or enable vCenter HA, enter maintenance mode,
and remove the cluster configuration.
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5 Troubleshoot Your vCenter HA Environment

In case of problems you can troubleshoot your environment. The task you need to perform
depends on the failure symptoms. For additional troubleshooting information, see the
VMware Knowledge Base system.
6 Patching a vCenter High Availability Environment

You can patch a vCenter Server which is in a vCenter High Availability cluster by using the
software-packages utility available in the vCenter Server shell.
Plan the vCenter HA Deployment

Before you can configure vCenter HA, you have to consider several factors. A deployment with
components that use different versions of vSphere requires different considerations than a
deployment that includes only vSphere 7.0 components. Resource and software requirements
and the networking setup must also be considered carefully.
vCenter Architecture Overview

A vCenter HA cluster consists of three vCenter Server instances. The first instance, initially used
as the Active node, is cloned twice to a Passive node and to a Witness node. Together, the three
nodes provide an active-passive failover solution.
Deploying each of the nodes on a different ESXi instance protects against hardware failure.
Adding the three ESXi hosts to a DRS cluster can further protect your environment.
When vCenter HA configuration is complete, only the Active node has an active management
interface (public IP). The three nodes communicate over a private network called vCenter HA
network that is set up as part of configuration. The Active node is continuously replicating data
to the Passive node.
Figure 4-1. vCenter Three-Node Cluster
vCenter (Active) vCenter (Passive)
Mgmt Interface
HA Interface HA Interface
vCenter HA
Network
Witness
All three nodes are necessary for the functioning of this feature. Compare the node
responsibilities.
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Table 4-1. vCenter HA Nodes

Node Description
Active n Runs the active vCenter Server instance

n Uses a public IP address for the management interface
n Uses the vCenter HA network for replication of data to the Passive node.
n Uses the vCenter HA network to communicate with the Witness node.
Passive n Is initially a clone of the Active node

n Constantly receives updates from and synchronizes state with the Active node over the vCenter HA
network
n Automatically takes over the role of the Active node if a failure occurs
Witness n Is a lightweight clone of the Active node

n Provides a quorum to protect against a split-brain situations
vCenter HA Hardware and Software Requirements

Before you set up vCenter HA, ensure that you have sufficient memory, CPU, and datastore
resources, and ensure that you are using versions of vCenter Server and ESXi that support
vCenter HA.
Your environment must meet the following requirements.
Table 4-2. vCenter HA Requirements

Component Requirements
ESXi n ESXi 6.0 or later is required.

n A minimum of three ESXi hosts is strongly recommended. Each vCenter HA
node can then run on a different host for better protection.
Management vCenter Server (if used) Your environment can include a management vCenter Server system, or you
can set up your vCenter Server to manage the ESXi host on which it runs (self-
managed vCenter Server)
n vCenter Server 6.0 or later is required.
vCenter Server n vCenter Server 6.5 or later is required.

n Deployment size Small (4 CPU and 16GB RAM) or bigger is required to meet
the RTO. Do not use Tiny in production environments.
n vCenter HA is supported and tested with VMFS, NFS, and vSAN datastores.
n Ensure you have enough disk space to collect and store support bundles for
all three nodes on the Active node. See Collecting Support Bundles for a
vCenter HA Node.
Network connectivity n vCenter HA network latency between Active, Passive, and Witness nodes
must be less than 10 ms.
n The vCenter HA network must be on a different subnet than the
management network.
Licensing required for vCenter HA n vCenter HA requires a single vCenter Server license.
n vCenter HA requires a Standard license.
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Configuration Workflow Overview in the vSphere Client

You can use the Set Up vCenter HA wizard in the vSphere Client to configure the Passive and
Witness nodes. The Set Up vCenter HA wizard automatically creates the Passive and Witness
nodes as part of vCenter HA configuration. With the manual option, you are responsible for
manually cloning the Active node to create the Passive and Witness nodes.
Automatic Configuration with the vSphere Client

You must meet the following requirements to perform automatic configuration.
n The vCenter Server that will become the Active node is managing its own ESXi host and its
own virtual machine. This configuration is sometimes called a self-managed vCenter Server.
If you meet the requirements the automatic workflow is as follows.
1 The user deploys the first vCenter Server, which will become the Active node.
2 The user adds a second network (port group) for vCenter HA traffic on each ESXi host.
3 The user starts the vCenter HA configuration and supplies the IP addresses, the target ESXi
host or cluster, and the datastore for each clone.
4 The system clones the Active node and creates a Passive node with precisely the same
settings, including the same host name.
5 The system clones the Active node again and creates a more light-weight Witness node.
6 The system sets up the vCenter HA network on which the three nodes communicate, for
example, by exchanging heartbeats and other information.
Manual Configuration with the vSphere Client

If you want more control over your deployment, you can perform a manual configuration. With
this option, you are responsible for cloning the Active node yourself as part of vCenter HA setup.
If you select this option and remove the vCenter HA configuration later, you are responsible for
deleting the nodes that you created.
For the manual option, the workflow is as follows.
1 The user deploys the first vCenter Server, which will become the Active node.
2 The user adds a second network (port group) for vCenter HA traffic on each ESXi host.
3 The user must add a second network adapter (NIC) to the Active node if the credentials of
the Active management vCenter Server are unknown.
4 The user logs in to the vCenter Server (Active node) with the vSphere Client.
5 The user starts the vCenter HA configuration, selects the checkbox to manually configure and
supplies IP address and subnet information for the Passive and Witness nodes. Optionally,
the user can override the failover management IP addresses.
6 The user logs in to the management vCenter Server and creates two clones of the vCenter
Server (Active node).
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7 The system sets up the vCenter HA network on which the three nodes exchange heartbeats
and replication information.
8 The vCenter Server is protected by vCenter HA.
See Configure vCenter HA With the vSphere Client for details.
Configure the Network

Regardless of the deployment option and inventory hierarchy that you select, you have to set up
your network before you can start configuration. To set the foundation for the vCenter HA
network, you add a port group to each ESXi host.
After configuration is complete, the vCenter HA cluster has two networks, the management
network on the first virtual NIC and the vCenter HA network on the second virtual NIC.
Management network
The management network serves client requests (public IP). The management network IP
addresses must be static.
vCenter HA network
The vCenter HA network connects the Active, Passive, and Witness nodes and replicates the
server state. It also monitors heartbeats.
n The vCenter HA network IP addresses for the Active, Passive, and Witness nodes must be
static.
n The vCenter HA network must be on a different subnet than the management network.
The three nodes can be on the same subnet or on different subnets.
n Network latency between the Active, Passive, and Witness nodes must be less than 10
milliseconds.
n You must not add a default gateway entry for the cluster network.
Prerequisites
n The vCenter Server that later becomes the Active node, is deployed.
n You can access and have privileges to modify that vCenter Server and the ESXi host on which
it runs.
n During network setup, you need static IP addresses for the management network. The
management and cluster network addresses must be IPv4 or IPv6. They cannot be mixed
mode IP addresses.
Procedure
1 Log in to the management vCenter Server and find the ESXi host on which the Active node is
running.
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2 Add a port group to the ESXi host.
This port group can be on an existing virtual switch or, for improved network isolation, you
can create a new virtual switch. It must be different from the management network.
3 If your environment includes the recommended three ESXi hosts, add the port group to each
of the hosts.
Configure vCenter HA With the vSphere Client

When you use the vSphere Client, the Set Up vCenter HA wizard creates and configures a
second network adapter on the vCenter Server, clones the Active node, and configures the
vCenter HA network.
Prerequisites
n Deploy vCenter Server that you want to use as the initial Active node.
n The vCenter Server must have a static IP address.
n SSH must be enabled on the vCenter Server.
n Verify that your environment meets the following requirements.
n The vCenter Server that will become the Active node is managing its own ESXi host and
its own virtual machine. This configuration is sometimes called a self-managed vCenter
Server.
n Set up the infrastructure for the vCenter HA network. See Configure the Network.
n Determine which static IP addresses to use for the two vCenter Server nodes that will
become the Passive node and Witness node.
Procedure
1 Log in to the Active node with the vSphere Client.
2 Select the vCenter Server object in the inventory and select the Configure tab.
3 Select vCenter HA under settings.
4 Click on the Set Up vCenter HA button to start the setup wizard.
n If the vCenter server is self-managed, the Resource settings page is displayed. Proceed
to step 7.
n If your vCenter server is managed by another vCenter server in the same SSO domain,
proceed to step 7.
n If your vCenter server is managed by another vCenter server in a different SSO domain,
input the location and credential details of that management vCenter server.
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5 Click Management vCenter Server credentials. Specify the Management vCenter server
FQDN or IP address, Single Sign-On user name and password and click Next.
If you do not have the Single Sign-On administrator credentials, select the second bullet and
click Next.
6 You may see a Certificate warning displayed. Review the SHA1 thumbprint and select Yes to
continue.
7 In the Resource settings section, first select the vCenter HA network for the active node from
the drop-down menu.
8 Click on the checkbox if you want to automatically create clones for Passive and Witness
nodes.
Note If you do not select the checkbox, you must manually create clones for Passive and
Witness nodes after you click Finish.
9 For the Passive node, click Edit.
a Specify a unique name and target location.
b Select the destination compute resource for the operation.
c Select the datastore in which to store the configuration and disk files.
d Select virtual machine Management (NIC 0) and vCenter HA (NIC 1) networks.
If there are issues with your selections, errors or compatibility warnings are displayed.
e Review your selections and click Finish.
10 For the Witness node, click Edit.
a Specify a unique name and target location.
b Select the destination compute resource for the operation.
c Select the datastore in which to store the configuration and disk files.
d Select vCenter HA (NIC 1) network.
e Review your selections and click Finish.
11 Click Next.
12 In the IP settings section, select the IP version from the drop-down menu.
13 Enter the IPv4 address (NIC 1) and Subnet mask or prefix length information for the Active,
Passive and Witness nodes.
You can Edit management network settings for the Passive Node. Customizing these settings
are optional. By default, the management network settings of the Active node are applied.
14 Click Finish.
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Results
The Passive and Witness nodes are created. When Set Up vCenter HA is complete, vCenter
Server has high availability protection. After vCenter HA is enabled, you can click Edit to enter
Maintenance Mode, Enable or Disable vCenter HA. There are separate buttons to remove
vCenter HA or initiate vCenter HA failover.
What to do next
See Manage the vCenter HA Configuration for a list of cluster management tasks.
For a brief overview of enhancements in the vSphere Client when working with vCenter HA, see:
Enhancements to Working with vCenter HA in the vSphere Client
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Manage the vCenter HA Configuration

After you configure your vCenter HA cluster, you can perform management tasks. These tasks
include certificate replacement, replacement of SSH keys, and SNMP setup. You can also edit the
cluster configuration to disable or enable vCenter HA, enter maintenance mode, and remove the
cluster configuration.
n Set Up SNMP Traps

You can set up Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) traps to receive SNMP
notifications for your vCenter HA cluster.
n Set Up Your Environment to Use Custom Certificates

The machine SSL certificate on each node is used for cluster management communication
and for encryption of replication traffic. If you want to use custom certificates, you have to
remove the vCenter HA configuration, delete the Passive and Witness nodes, provision the
Active node with the custom certificate, and reconfigure the cluster.
n Manage vCenter HA SSH Keys

vCenter HA uses SSH keys for password-less authentication between the Active, Passive,
and Witness nodes. The authentication is used for heartbeat exchange and file and data
replication. To replace the SSH keys in the nodes of a vCenter HA cluster, you disable the
cluster, generate new SSH keys on the Active node, transfer the keys to the passive node,
and enable the cluster.
n Initiate a vCenter HA Failover

You can manually initiate a failover and have the Passive node become the Active node.
n Edit the vCenter HA Cluster Configuration

When you edit the vCenter HA cluster configuration, you can disable or enable the cluster,
place the cluster in maintenance mode, or remove the cluster.
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n Perform Backup and Restore Operations

For additional security, you can back up the Active node in the vCenter HA cluster. You can
then restore the node in case of catastrophic failure.
n Remove a vCenter HA Configuration

You can remove a vCenter HA configuration from the vSphere Client.
n Reboot All vCenter HA Nodes

If you have to shut down and reboot all nodes in the cluster, you must follow a specific
shutdown order to prevent the Passive node from assuming the role of Active node.
n Change the Server Environment

When you deploy a vCenter Server, you select an environment. For vCenter HA, Small,
Medium, Large, and X-Large are supported for production environments. If you need more
space and want to change the environment, you have to delete the Passive node virtual
machine before you change the configuration.
n Collecting Support Bundles for a vCenter HA Node

Collecting a support bundle from all the nodes in a vCenter HA cluster helps with
troubleshooting.
Set Up SNMP Traps

You can set up Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) traps to receive SNMP
notifications for your vCenter HA cluster.
The traps default to SNMP version 1.
Set up SNMP traps for the Active node and the Passive node. You tell the agent where to send
related traps, by adding a target entry to the snmpd configuration.
Procedure
1 Log in to the Active node by using the Virtual Machine Console or SSH.
2 Run the vicfg-snmp command, for example:
vicfg-snmp -t 10.160.1.1@1166/public
In this example, 10.160.1.1 is the client listening address, 1166 is the client listening port, and
public is the community string.
3 Enable the SNMP agent (snmpd) by running the following command.
vicfg-snmp -e
What to do next
You also might find these commands useful.
n To view the complete help for the command, run vicfg-snmp -h.
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n To disable the SNMP agent, run vicfg-snmp -D.
n To show the SNMP agent's configuration, run vicfg-snmp -s.
n To reset the configuration to the default, run vicfg-snmp -r.
Set Up Your Environment to Use Custom Certificates

The machine SSL certificate on each node is used for cluster management communication and
for encryption of replication traffic. If you want to use custom certificates, you have to remove
the vCenter HA configuration, delete the Passive and Witness nodes, provision the Active node
with the custom certificate, and reconfigure the cluster.
If possible, replace certificates in the vCenter Server that will become the Active node before you
clone the node.
Procedure
1 Edit the cluster configuration and select Remove.
2 Delete the Passive node and the Witness node.
3 On the Active node, which is now a standalone vCenter Server, replace the machine SSL
Certificate with a custom certificate.
4 Reconfigure the cluster.
Manage vCenter HA SSH Keys

vCenter HA uses SSH keys for password-less authentication between the Active, Passive, and
Witness nodes. The authentication is used for heartbeat exchange and file and data replication.
To replace the SSH keys in the nodes of a vCenter HA cluster, you disable the cluster, generate
new SSH keys on the Active node, transfer the keys to the passive node, and enable the cluster.
Procedure
1 Edit the cluster and change the mode to Disabled.
2 Log in to the Active node by using the Virtual Machine Console or SSH.
3 Enable the bash shell.
bash
4 Run the following command to generate new SSH keys on the Active node.
/usr/lib/vmware-vcha/scripts/resetSshKeys.py
5 Use SCP to copy the keys to the Passive node and Witness node.
scp /vcha/.ssh/*
6 Edit the cluster configuration and set the vCenter HA cluster to Enabled.
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Initiate a vCenter HA Failover

You can manually initiate a failover and have the Passive node become the Active node.
A vCenter HA cluster supports two types of failover.
Automatic failover
The Passive node attempts to take over the active role in case of an Active node failure.
Manual failover
The user can force a Passive node to take over the active role by using the Initiate Failover
action.
Initiate a manual failover for troubleshooting and testing.
Procedure
1 Log in to the Active node vCenter Server with the vSphere Client and click Configure for the
vCenter Server where you need to initiate failover.
2 Under Settings select vCenter HA and click Initiate Failover.
3 Click Yes to start the failover.
A dialog offers you the option to force a failover without synchronization. In most cases,
performing synchronization first is best.
4 After the failover, you can verify that the Passive node has the role of the Active node in the
vSphere Client.
Edit the vCenter HA Cluster Configuration

When you edit the vCenter HA cluster configuration, you can disable or enable the cluster, place
the cluster in maintenance mode, or remove the cluster.
The operating mode of a vCenter Server controls the failover capabilities and state replication in
a vCenter HA cluster.
A vCenter HA cluster can operate in one of the following modes.
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Table 4-3. vCenter HA Cluster Modes of Operation

Manual
Mode Automatic Failover Failover Replication
Enabled Yes Yes Yes This default mode of operation

protects the vCenter Server from
hardware and software failures by
performing automatic failover.
Maintenance No Yes Yes Used for some maintenance tasks.

For other tasks, you have to disable
vCenter HA.
Disabled No No No If the Passive or Witness nodes are

lost or recovering from a failure, a
vCenter HA configuration can be
disabled. The Active node continues
as a standalone vCenter Server.
Note If the cluster is operating in either Maintenance or Disabled mode, an Active node can
continue serving client requests even if the Passive and Witness nodes are lost or unreachable.
Prerequisites
Verify that the vCenter HA cluster is deployed and contains the Active, Passive, and Witness
nodes.
Procedure
1 Log in to the Active node vCenter Server with the vSphere Client and click Configure.
2 Under Settings select vCenter HA and click Edit.
3 Select one of the options.
Option Result
Enable vCenter HA Enables replication between the Active and Passive nodes. If the cluster is in a healthy
state, your Active node is protected by automatic failover from the Passive node.
Maintenance Mode In maintenance mode, replication still occurs between the Active and Passive nodes.
However, automatic failover is disabled.
Disable vCenter HA Disables replication and failover. Keeps the configuration of the cluster. You can later
enable vCenter HA again.
Remove vCenter HA Removes the cluster. Replication and failover no longer are provided. The Active node
cluster continues to operate as a standalone vCenter Server. See Remove a vCenter HA
Configuration for details.
4 Click OK.
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Perform Backup and Restore Operations

For additional security, you can back up the Active node in the vCenter HA cluster. You can then
restore the node in case of catastrophic failure.
Note Remove the cluster configuration before you restore the Active node. Results are
unpredictable if you restore the Active node and the Passive node is still running or other cluster
configuration is still in place.
Prerequisites
Verify the interoperability of vCenter HA and the backup and restore solution. One solution is
vCenter Server file-based restore.
Procedure
1 Back up the Active node.
Do not back up the Passive node and Witness node.
2 Before you restore the cluster, power off and delete all vCenter HA nodes.
3 Restore the Active node.
The Active node is restored as a standalone vCenter Server.
4 Reconfigure the vCenter HA.
Remove a vCenter HA Configuration

You can remove a vCenter HA configuration from the vSphere Client.
Procedure
1 Log in to the Active node vCenter Server and click Configure.
2 Under Settings select vCenter HA and click Remove VCHA.
n The vCenter HA cluster's configuration is removed from the Active, Passive, and Witness
nodes.
n You can choose to delete the Passive and Witness nodes.
n The Active node continues to run as a standalone vCenter Server.
n You cannot reuse the Passive and Witness nodes in a new vCenter HA configuration.
n If you performed a manual configuration, or if the Passive and Witness nodes are not
discoverable, you must delete these nodes explicitly.
n Even if the second virtual NIC was added by the configuration process, the removal
process does not remove the virtual NIC.
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Reboot All vCenter HA Nodes

If you have to shut down and reboot all nodes in the cluster, you must follow a specific shutdown
order to prevent the Passive node from assuming the role of Active node.
Procedure
1 Shut down the nodes in this order.
n Passive node
n Active node
n Witness node
2 Restart each node.
You can restart nodes in any order.
3 Verify that all nodes join the cluster successfully, and that the previous Active node resumes
that role.
Change the Server Environment

When you deploy a vCenter Server, you select an environment. For vCenter HA, Small, Medium,
Large, and X-Large are supported for production environments. If you need more space and
want to change the environment, you have to delete the Passive node virtual machine before
you change the configuration.
Procedure
1 Log in to the Active node with the vSphere Client, edit the cluster configuration, and select
Disable.
2 Delete the Passive node virtual machine.
3 Change the vCenter Server configuration for the Active node, for example, from a Small
environment to a Medium environment.
4 Reconfigure vCenter HA.
Collecting Support Bundles for a vCenter HA Node

Collecting a support bundle from all the nodes in a vCenter HA cluster helps with troubleshooting.
When you collect a support bundle from the Active node in a vCenter HA cluster, the system
proceeds as follows.
n Collects support bundle information from the Active node itself.
n Collects support bundles from Passive and Witness nodes and places them in the commands
directory on the Active node support bundle.
Note The collection of support bundles from the Passive and Witness nodes is a best effort and
happens if the nodes are reachable.
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Troubleshoot Your vCenter HA Environment

In case of problems you can troubleshoot your environment. The task you need to perform
depends on the failure symptoms. For additional troubleshooting information, see the VMware
Knowledge Base system.
n vCenter HA Clone Operation Fails During Deployment

If the vCenter HA configuration process does not create the clones successfully, you have to
resolve that cloning error.
n Redeploy the Passive or Witness node

If the passive or witness node fails and vCenter HA cluster was configured using the
automatic cloning method, you can redeploy it in the vCenter HA Settings page.
n vCenter HA Deployment Fails with an Error

Deployment failures can be caused by configuration issues, especially problems with the
networking setup.
n Troubleshooting a Degraded vCenter HA Cluster

For a vCenter HA cluster to be healthy, each of the Active, Passive, and Witness nodes must
be fully operational and be reachable over the vCenter HA cluster network. If any of the
nodes fails, the cluster is considered to be in a degraded state.
n Recovering from Isolated vCenter HA Nodes

If all nodes in a vCenter HA cluster cannot communicate with each other, the Active node
stops serving client requests.
n Resolving Failover Failures

When a Passive node does not become the Active node during a failover, you can force the
Passive node to become the Active node.
n VMware vCenter® HA Alarms and Events

If a vCenter HA cluster is in a degraded state, alarms and events show errors.
vCenter HA Clone Operation Fails During Deployment

If the vCenter HA configuration process does not create the clones successfully, you have to
resolve that cloning error.
Problem
Clone operation fails.
Note Cloning a Passive or Witness VM for a VCHA deployment to the same NFS 3.1 datastore as
the source Active node VM fails. You must use NFS4 or clone the Passive and Witness VMs to a
datastore different from the Active VM.
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Cause
Look for the clone exception. It might indicate one of the following problems.
n You have a DRS-enabled cluster, but do not have three hosts.
n The host or database connection is lost.
n Not enough disk space.
n Other Clone Virtual Machine errors
Solution
1 Resolve the error that caused the problem.
2 Remove the cluster and start configuration again.
Redeploy the Passive or Witness node

If the passive or witness node fails and vCenter HA cluster was configured using the automatic
cloning method, you can redeploy it in the vCenter HA Settings page.
Procedure
1 Log in to the Active node with the vSphere Client.
2 Select the vCenter Server object in the inventory and select the Configure tab.
3 Select vCenter HA under Settings.
4 Click on the REDEPLOY button next to the node to start the Redeploy wizard.
5
n If your vCenter server is managed by another vCenter server in the same SSO domain,
proceed to step 6.
n If your vCenter server is managed by another vCenter server in a different SSO domain,
input the location and credential details of that management vCenter server. Enter the
Management vCenter Server FQDN or IP address and Single Sign-On credentials.
6 Specify a unique name and target location.
7 Select the destination compute resource for the operation.
8 Select the datastore in which to store the configuration and disk files.
9 Configure the virtual machine networks.
n If you are redeploying the Passive node, select virtual machine Management (NIC 0) and
vCenter HA (NIC 1) networks.
n If you are redeploying the Witness node, select vCenter HA (NIC 1) network.
10 Review your selections and click Finish to redeploy the node.
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vCenter HA Deployment Fails with an Error

Deployment failures can be caused by configuration issues, especially problems with the
networking setup.
Problem
You start a vCenter HA cluster configuration, and it fails with an error. The error might show the
cause of the problem, for example, you might see an SSH Connection Failed message.
Solution
If deployment fails, take steps to resolve the network issues.
1 Verify that the Passive and Witness nodes can be reached from the Active node.
2 Verify that routing between the nodes is set up correctly.
3 Check network latency.
Troubleshooting a Degraded vCenter HA Cluster

For a vCenter HA cluster to be healthy, each of the Active, Passive, and Witness nodes must be
fully operational and be reachable over the vCenter HA cluster network. If any of the nodes fails,
the cluster is considered to be in a degraded state.
Problem
If the cluster is in a degraded state, failover cannot occur. For information about failure scenarios
while the cluster is in a degraded state, see Resolving Failover Failures.
Cause
The cluster can be in a degraded state for a number of reasons.
One of the nodes fails
n If the Active node fails, a failover of the Active node to the Passive node occurs
automatically. After the failover, the Passive node becomes the Active node.
At this point, the cluster is in a degraded state because the original Active node is
unavailable.
After the failed node is repaired or comes online, it becomes the new Passive node and
the cluster returns to a healthy state after the Active and Passive nodes synchronize.
n If the Passive node fails, the Active node continues to function, but no failover is possible
and the cluster is in a degraded state.
If the Passive node is repaired or comes online, it automatically rejoins the cluster and the
cluster state is healthy after the Active and Passive nodes synchronize.
n If the Witness node fails, the Active node continues to function and replication between
Active and Passive node continues, but no failover can occur.
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If the Witness node is repaired or comes online, it automatically rejoins the cluster and the
cluster state is healthy.
Database replication fails
If replication fails between the Active and Passive nodes, the cluster is considered degraded.
The Active node continues to synchronize with the Passive node. If it succeeds, the cluster
returns to a healthy state. This state can result from network bandwidth problems or other
resource shortages.
Configuration file replication issues
If configuration files are not properly replicated between the Active and Passive nodes, the
cluster is in a degraded state. The Active node continues to attempt synchronization with the
Passive node. This state can result from network bandwidth problems or other resource
shortages.
Solution
How you recover depends on the cause of the degraded cluster state. If the cluster is in a
degraded state, events, alarms, and SNMP traps show errors.
If one of the nodes is down, check for hardware failure or network isolation. Check whether the
failed node is powered on.
In case of replication failures, check if the vCenter HA network has sufficient bandwidth and
ensure network latency is 10 ms or less.
Recovering from Isolated vCenter HA Nodes

If all nodes in a vCenter HA cluster cannot communicate with each other, the Active node stops
serving client requests.
Problem
Node isolation is a network connectivity problem.
Solution
1 Attempt to resolve the connectivity problem. If you can restore connectivity, isolated nodes
rejoin the cluster automatically and the Active node starts serving client requests.
2 If you cannot resolve the connectivity problem, you have to log in to Active node's console
directly.
a Power off and delete the Passive node and the Witness node virtual machines.
b Log in to the Active node by using SSH or through the Virtual Machine Console.
c To enable the Bash shell, enter shell at the appliancesh prompt.
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d Run the following command to remove the vCenter HA configuration.
vcha-destroy -f
e Reboot the Active node.
The Active node is now a standalone vCenter Server.
f Perform vCenter HA cluster configuration again.
Resolving Failover Failures

When a Passive node does not become the Active node during a failover, you can force the
Passive node to become the Active node.
Problem
The Passive node fails while trying to assume the role of the Active node.
Cause
A vCenter HA failover might not succeed for these reasons.
n The Witness node becomes unavailable while the Passive node is trying to assume the role of
the Active node.
n An server state synchronization issue between the nodes exists.
Solution
You recover from this issue as follows.
1 If the Active node recovers from the failure, it becomes the Active node again.
2 If the Witness node recovers from the failure, follow these steps.
a Log in to the Passive node through the Virtual Machine Console.
b To enable the Bash shell, enter shell at the appliancesh prompt.
c Run the following command.
vcha-reset-primary
d Reboot the Passive node.
3 If both Active node and Witness node cannot recover, you can force the Passive node to
become a standalone vCenter Server.
a Delete the Active node and Witness node virtual machines.
b Log in to the Passive node through the Virtual Machine Console.
c To enable the Bash shell, enter shell at the appliancesh prompt.
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d Run the following command.
vcha-destroy
e Reboot the Passive node.
VMware vCenter® HA Alarms and Events

If a vCenter HA cluster is in a degraded state, alarms and events show errors.
Problem
Table 4-4. The following events will raise VCHA health alarm in vpxd:
Event Name Event Description Event Type Category
vCenter HA cluster state is vCenter HA cluster state is com.vmware.vcha.cluster.st info

currently healthy currently healthy ate.healthy
vCenter HA cluster state is vCenter HA cluster state is com.vmware.vcha.cluster.st warning

currently degraded currently degraded ate.degraded
vCenter HA cluster state is vCenter HA cluster state is com.vmware.vcha.cluster.st error

currently isolated currently isolated ate.isolated
vCenter HA cluster is vCenter HA cluster is com.vmware.vcha.cluster.st info

destroyed destroyed ate.destroyed
Table 4-5. The following events will raise PSC HA health alarm in vpxd:
PSC HA state is currently PSC HA state is currently com.vmware.vcha.psc.ha.h info

healthy healthy ealth.healthy
PSC HA state is currently PSC HA state is currently com.vmware.vcha.psc.ha.h info

degraded degraded ealth.degraded
PSC HA is not monitored PSC HA state is not being com.vmware.vcha.psc.ha.h info

after vCenter HA cluster is monitored ealth.unknown
destroyed
Table 4-6. Cluster Status Related Events

Node {nodeName} joined One node joined back to com.vmware.vcha.node.join info

back to the cluster the cluster ed
Node {nodeName} left the One node left the cluster com.vmware.vcha.node.left warning
cluster
Failover succeeded Failover succeeded com.vmware.vcha.failover.s info

ucceeded
Failover cannot proceed Failover cannot proceed com.vmware.vcha.failover.f warning

when cluster is in disabled when cluster is in disabled ailed.disabled.mode
mode mode
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Table 4-6. Cluster Status Related Events (continued)


when cluster does not have when cluster does not have ailed.node.lost
all three nodes connected all three nodes connected

when vPostgres on Passive when Passive node is not ailed.passive.not.ready
node is not ready to ready to takeover
takeover
vCenter HA cluster mode vCenter HA cluster mode com.vmware.vcha.cluster.m info

changed to {clusterMode} changed ode.changed
Table 4-7. Database replication-related events

Database replication mode Database replication state com.vmware.vcha.DB.replic info

changed to {newState} changed: sync, async or no ation.state.changed
replication
Table 4-8. File replication-related events

Appliance {fileProviderType} Appliance File replication com.vmware.vcha.file.replic info

is {state} state changed ation.state.changed
Patching a vCenter High Availability Environment

You can patch a vCenter Server which is in a vCenter High Availability cluster by using the
software-packages utility available in the vCenter Server shell.
For more information, see Patch a vCenter High Availability Environment in vSphere Upgrade.
VMware, Inc. 92

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vSphere Availability

About vSphere Availability 6

1 Business Continuity and Minimizing Downtime 7

2 Creating and Using vSphere HA Clusters 11

Best Practices for Networking 44

3 Providing Fault Tolerance for Virtual Machines 49

4 vCenter High Availability 72

Plan the vCenter HA Deployment 73

n Provide high availability independent of hardware, operating system, and applications.

n Reduce the planned downtime for common maintenance operations.

n Provide automatic recovery in cases of failure.

This chapter includes the following topics:

n Reducing Planned Downtime

n Preventing Unplanned Downtime

n vSphere HA Provides Rapid Recovery from Outages

n vSphere Fault Tolerance Provides Continuous Availability

n Protecting vCenter Server with vCenter High Availability

n Protecting vCenter Server with VMware Service Lifecycle Manager

Reducing Planned Downtime

n Eliminate downtime for common maintenance operations.

n Eliminate planned maintenance windows.

n Perform maintenance at any time without disrupting users and services.

Preventing Unplanned Downtime

n Network interface teaming. Provide tolerance of individual network card failures.

n Storage multipathing. Tolerate storage path failures.

vSphere HA Provides Rapid Recovery from Outages

vSphere HA protects application availability in the following ways:

n It protects against application failure by continuously monitoring a virtual machine and

n It protects against datastore accessibility failures by restarting affected virtual machines on

vSphere HA has several advantages over traditional failover solutions:

Reduced hardware cost and setup

Increased application availability

DRS and vMotion integration

vSphere Fault Tolerance Provides Continuous Availability

Protecting vCenter Server with vCenter High Availability

Protecting vCenter Server with VMware Service Lifecycle

This chapter includes the following topics:

n How vSphere HA Works

n vSphere HA Admission Control

n Creating a vSphere HA Cluster

n Configuring vSphere Availability Settings

n Best Practices for VMware vSphere® High Availability Clusters

n Change in behavior for HA VIBs

How vSphere HA Works

Primary and Secondary Hosts

The primary host in a cluster has several responsibilities:

n Managing the lists of cluster hosts and protected virtual machines.

Host Failure Types

In a vSphere HA cluster, three types of host failure are detected:

n Failure. A host stops functioning.

n Isolation. A host becomes network isolated.

n Partition. A host loses network connectivity with the primary host.

Determining Responses to Host Issues

Host Isolation Response

Virtual Machine Dependencies

Factors Considered for Virtual Machine Restarts

Virtual machine and host compatibility

VM and Application Monitoring

Table 2-1. VM Monitoring Settings

Low 120 7 days