Advanced Settings for VMware HA

0 Comments ESX 3.5 Tips, ESXi 3.5 Tips, VMware HA, VMware

After discussing the issue(s) about NFS.LockDisable and how those problems may be generated (ie: VMware HA initiation), a few comments came in about VMware HA and how the default settings may not fit their specific needs.

Well, here are some Advanced Settings that you can change from within your Cluster.

das.AllowNetwork By default the Service Console portgroup is used for failure detection. By entering in das.AllowNetwork you can specify an additional portgroup to use.

das.isolationAddress By default VMware HA nodes check heartbeats of other nodes . When this heartbeat is lost the suspected Isolated nodes then pings its Service Console gateway by default to check that it is truly isolated. By using the das.isolationAddress command, you can add additional IP addresses for the server to check. These IPs must be on the Service Console portgroup, or in the portgroup you’ve added for das.AllowNetwork

das.failureDetectionTime
This is the time required before VMware HA considers a host to be Isolated.
Default setting is 14 seconds, this can be changed to a setting that will better fit your needs.

das.failureDetectionInterval
This is the rate of monitoring between VMware HA nodes, think of this as a heartbeat check.
Default setting is 1 second, if you feel that this is just too often you can change it.

VMware HA events are captured in the vpxa.log file on each VMware ESX host. DasHostIsolatedEvent is the syntax left in the log file when an Isolation happens.

If you’re having problems with configuring VMware HA, you can check the /var/log/vmware/aam/aam_config_util_*.log files. These logs include all your necessary information for installing, configuring and connecting to other HA nodes.

If it comes down to it, you can remove the HA software from the ESX node by doing the following;

[root@dpcrc_vmdevsap1 aam]# rpm -qa |grep aam
VMware-aam-haa-2.2.0-1 <<< should be listed if installed
VMware-aam-vcint-2.2.0-1 <<< should be listed if installed
[root@dpcrc_vmdevsap1 aam]#
rpm -e VMware-aam-haa-2.2.0-1 VMware-aam-vcint-2.2.0-1

This will do a clean uninstall of the VMware HA software, you can then Reconfigure for VMware HA from within VirtualCenter.

Also, Duncan Epping over at yellow-bricks.com has a complete listing of Advanced VMware HA settings, you can check those out at http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2008/10/06/update-ha-advanced-options-2/