Recreating a VMware High Availability Cluster in vSphere

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This document guides you through recreating a VMware High Availability Cluster (HA Cluster). Recreating a VMware HA Cluster may be necessary when the configuration information inside a cluster is incorrect. The VMware HA agents across the cluster have a list of hosts participating in the cluster and also their corresponding node role (Primary or Secondary). If this list has discrepancies across the cluster, VMware HA fails.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Embedded
VMware ESX Server 3.0.x
VMware ESX 4.0.x
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Installable
VMware ESX Server 3.5.x
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Installable
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Embedded
VMware ESX 4.1.x
VMware VirtualCenter 2.0.x
VMware VirtualCenter 2.5.x

Resolution

To recreate a VMware HA Cluster:

1. Disable VMware HA and VMware DRS on the cluster.
   1. Right-click on the <Clustername> and click Edit Settings.
   2. Deselect VMware HA and VMware DRS.
   3. Click OK.
      
      
2. Disconnect and remove all hosts from the cluster.
   1. Right-click on the <Hostname> and click Disconnect.
   2. Right-click on the <Hostname> and click Remove.
      
      Note: A warning appears when you remove a host from VirtualCenter. Click OK. The virtual machines continue to run on their respective ESX hosts, but they are not visible from within VirtualCenter until the cluster has been recreated.
      
      
3. Repeat step 2 for all ESX hosts in the cluster.
   
   
4. Right-click on the <Clustername> and click Remove to remove the now empty cluster.
   
   
5. Right-click on the <datacentername> and click New Cluster to create a new cluster. The cluster can have the same name as the old cluster.
   
   Note: Have VMware HA and (if applicable) VMware DRS enabled from start.
   
   
6. Right-click on the <Clustername> and click Add Host to add all ESX hosts to the new cluster.
   
   
7. Repeat step 6 for all ESX hosts.

Additional Information

If you encounter issues after following the troubleshooting steps above, you may need to uninstall and reinstall agents related to high availability on the ESX host (aam and vpxa). For more information, see:

• Troubleshooting a VMware High Availability cannot read /var/log/vmware/aam/aam_config_util.def error (1007234)
• Connecting to ESX hosts from VirtualCenter after an upgrade fails with the error: Failed to install the VirtualCenter agent service (4223326)

在 vSphere 中重新创建 VMware High Availability 群集
vSphere での VMware High Availability クラスタの再作成