Installing the HA Agent fails on all hosts, except one

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Enabling High Availability (HA) on the cluster fails for all ESXi hosts, except one
• Cannot manually reconfigure the hosts
• Manually reconfiguring the hosts fails
• You see the error:
  
  The HA Agents could not be installed
  
  
• Disabling and enabling HA on the cluster does not resolve the issue
• Restarting the Management services on the hosts does not resolve the issue
• The /var/log/fdm.log file remains empty on hosts where HA cannot not be installed

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0
VMware vCenter Server Appliance 5.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 5.0.x

Cause

This issue occurs if the global log location for all hosts in the cluster is using the same directory as configured in Advanced Settings for each host.

Resolution

To verify the global log file location:

1. Click the first host in the cluster and then click on the Configuration tab.
2. Click the Advanced Settings link under Software.
3. Expand Syslog > Global.
4. Verify and ensure that the value in Syslog.global.logDir is not using the same location on a shared datastore to save the log files.

To modify the global log file location:

1. Use the Datastore Browser to create sub directories for each host in the cluster in the current location.
2. Edit the Syslog.global.logDir value to point to the newly created destination location.
   
   Note: You may receive an error from the vSphere Client indicating that the changes are not saved and when you review the configuration, you may still see the old location. But, if you check the /etc/vmsyslog.conf file on the host, you can see that the changes are applied.
   
   
3. Migrate all virtual machines from the affected host and reboot the host.
   
   Note: Restarting Management services does not apply the changes.
   
   
4. Repeat this procedure for all affected hosts.
5. Disable and enable HA on the cluster.

Alternatively, you can modify the global log unique location per host from the command prompt:

1. Log in to the ESXi host as root and run this command on each host:
   
   esxcli system syslog config set --logdir-unique true
   
   
2. Check if the vmsyslogd service is running using this command:
   
   ps | grep vmsyslogd
   
   8573 8573 vmsyslogd /bin/python
   
   
3. If vmsyslogd is not running, start the service using this command:
   
   /usr/lib/vmware/vmsyslog/bin/vmsyslogd
   
   
4. If vmsyslogd is running, restart the service using this command:
   
   esxcli system syslog reload

Additional Information

If the issue persists, see ESXi 5.0 reports multiple issues with syslog configuration (2016914).

ESXi 5.0 reports multiple issues with syslog configuration