Disabling and enabling VMware High Availability (HA)

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This article provides steps to enable or disable VMware vSphere High Availability (vSphere HA).

 

Some reasons why to disable vSphere HA:

• Making a lot of ESXi host configuration changes to a cluster within a short period of time to avoid constant vSphere HA error messages while making those changes.
• Troubleshooting of vSphere HA agent problems on ESXi hosts.
• While downgrading a license.
  • VMware HA might not be supported by the downgraded license.

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 6.5.x
VMware vCenter Server 6.7.x
VMware vCenter Server 7.0.x

VMware vSphere 7.x

VMware vSphere 8.x

Resolution

Note:

• This process may need to be completed for multiple clusters. VMware HA can be disabled only if there are no virtual machines with VMware Fault Tolerance (FT) enabled. If there are virtual machines with VMware FT enabled in the cluster you are disabling, turn off VMware FT before disabling VMware HA. The process of turning off VMware FT is described in Turn Off VMware FT.
• Virtual Machine Monitoring will also be disabled when HA is disabled.
  • The process may take some time to complete.

To disable vSphere HA in the vSphere Client:

1. Log in to the vSphere Client.
2. From the Home screen, click on Hosts and Clusters.
3. Browse to the cluster.
4. Click the Configure tab.
5. Select vSphere Availability and click Edit.
6. Deselect the VMware HA option.
7. Click OK.

To enable vSphere HA in the vSphere Web Client:

1. Log in to the vSphere Web Client
2. From the Home screen, click on Hosts and Clusters.
3. Browse to the cluster.
4. Click the Configure tab
5. Select vSphere Availability and click Edit.
6. Deselect the Turn On VMware HA option.
7. Click OK.

Additional Information

For more information on vSphere Availability, see About vSphere Availability

Re-configuring vSphere HA: Create a vSphere HA Cluster in the vSphere Client

Troubleshooting vSphere HA: Troubleshooting vSphere HA Host States