Cain Manor

How does a primary and / or secondary get selected?

• The first 5 hosts that join the VMware HA cluster are automatically selected as “primary nodes
• All the others are automatically selected as “secondary nodes”
• When you do a reconfigure for HA the primary nodes and secondary nodes are selected again, this is random

What’s up with these primaries and secondaries?

• Primary nodes hold cluster settings and all node states which are synced between primaries
• Secondary nodes send their state info(resource occupation) to the primary nodes
• Nodes send heartbeats to each other, primary nodes send heartbeats to primary nodes only and secondary also only to primary. And they do this every second. (Which is a changeable value: das.failuredetectioninterval)

So what if a primary node fails, will a secondary be promoted?

• No, there will only be a new primary appointed when the failed one is removed from the cluster. A secondary will be promoted to primary at random.

But what if all my primary nodes fail?

• This is an unaddressed issue, that’s the reason why you can only account for 4 host failures within a cluster! There needs to be at least one primary!

So when does the gateway come in play?

• Actually the gateway, which is the default “isolation address”, will only be used when an isolation has occurred. So when the AAM client thinks it’s isolated it will check the isolation addresses.

From - Yellow Brick - a very lovely VMWare oriented site.

To keep from typing your password when using VI Client 2.5, instead of

"C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\Launcher\VpxClient.exe"

Use

"C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\Launcher\VpxClient.exe" -passthroughAuth -s [admin console DNS Name]

Your would need to be logged in with the appropriate credentials on your client.

For those savvy in the ways of Unix and maybe even VMware, here is what you need to do…

vmkfstools -i /<source directory>/<VM name>.vmdk /<destination directory>/<VM name>.vmdk
cp /<source directory>/<VM name>.nvram /<destination directory>/<VM name>.nvram
cp /<source directory>/<VM name>.vmx /<destination directory>/<VM name>.vmx

Edit beyond01.nvram and change the swap volume path - AKA sched.swap.derivedName
Register - vmware-cmd register -s /vmfs/volumes/OS_Store/beyond01/beyond01.vmx

Error message about msg.uuid.moved. Use Keep if you are just moving.

Now for the long answer
Continue reading ‘Moving a .VMKD in VMware ESX 3.5’ »

When doing a hot import of a server into a VM, you might see this error.

"Multiple connections to a server or shared resource by the same user, using more than one user name, are not allowed.
Disconnect all previous connections to the server or shared resource and try again."

If you see it, just use this command…

 net use * /d

Login to your Service Console and type

esxcfg-info -w | grep HV

If you see..

|—-VT Support…………………………………………3

It was called VT in ESX 3.0. Just search for VT instead of HV

Converter application to remote physical machine 445 and 139
Converter application to VirtualCenter Server 443
Converter application to ESX Server 3.x 443
Physical machine to VirtualCenter Server 443
Physical machine to ESX Server 3.x 443

/etc/vmware/esx.conf - configuration files live here
/usr/sbin/vmware-authd - authentication daemon. The configuration files live at /etc/xinetd.d/vmware-authd
/etc/vmware/netmap.conf - map of virtual switches to device names
/etc/vmware/devnames.conf - maps device names to modules and their PCI addresses
/etc/vmware/hwconfig - hardware configuration in a text file