Vsphere 4 ESXi unable to get HA working

[mattberry]

I am setting up a trial using 2 x Dell Powereddge 1950 machines in HA mode. I can get this working fine in older VM infrastructure client and using ESXi 3.5 but not under VSphere using ESXi4 hosts. When setting up a cluster with the 2 machines I can't start any VM's get the error message 'insufficient resources to satisfy configured failover level for ha' and looking at available slots shows N/A ? Yet using the older software it shows correctly ? Is this something simple I am missing.

Thanks

Machine Spec Below

PowerEdge 1950

4 CPU x 1.596 GHz

Intel Xeon E5310 @ 1.60Ghz

[admin]

If you click on the Advanced Runtime Info link on the HA part of the Cluster Summary page, it will give you additional information about slot sizes and host states. What does that say?

-Sridhar

[mattberry]

In the advanced runtime info it shows the below settings. I used the same 2 hosts in ESX 3.5 and VC 2.5 and the cluster worked fine setting up exactly the same way on vSphere getting problems. Any help appreciated.

slot size: 0 MHz

1 virtual CPU

0 Mb

Total slots in cluster N/A

Used slots 0

Available slots 0

total powered on vms in cluster 0

total hosts in cluster 2

total good hosts in cluster 1

[mattberry]

I have made some changes and now In the advanced runtime info it shows the below settings. But when trying to start machines I still get 'insufficient resources to satisfy configured failover level for HA'

slot size: 0 MHz

1 virtual CPU

0 Mb

Total slots in cluster N/A

Used slots 0

Available slots 0

total powered on vms in cluster 0

total hosts in cluster 2

total good hosts in cluster 2

[admin]

Try disabling HA admission control (ie. select the option "allow powering on vms even if this violates the admission control constraints"), then power on a vm and recheck the advanced runtime info for the cluster - what is the slot size info at that point?

[admin]

Sorry for the late reply - I was on vacation.

The advanced runtime information tells you why you can't power on a VM

Available slots 0

total hosts in cluster 2

total good hosts in cluster 1

HA requires at least 2 "good" hosts in the cluster - and your setup has only one - it looks like the one of the hosts might not have HA configured on it properly - check the host summary for any config issues (yellow box in the summary page), and the tasks tab (and task details pane) for any additional details (either the configuration failed, or there's some runtime problem).

-Sridhar

[patrickds]

What BIOS version are your servers?

Vmware shows the 1950 as supported with version 2.5

http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/detail.php?device_cat=server&device_id=3287

As far as i can tell, Dell does not even support ESX higher than 3.0.x at all on the 1950 (unless it's a 1950 III)

http://content.dell.com/us/en/business/d/business_solutionswhitepapers_en/Documents49494A02MR.pdf.aspx

[mattberry]

I have updated BIOS no different same issue. It worked ok on ESXi 3.5 which isn't supported either so that is strange as worked perfect on 3.5 on the older BIOS

[mattberry]

If I turn off constraint then power on i get a dialog box saying 'vCenter was unable to find a suitable host to power on the virtual machine for the reasons listed below'

Then name of the machine and 'The host does not have sufficient memory resources to satisfy the reservation'

[admin]

The vms' memory reservations are too high. Go the resource allocation tab of the cluster and reduce them.

[mattberry]

I have checked the reservation settings and only set to 64Mb ? The cluster i am testing is just a test setup of 2 * Poweredge 1950 machines and I have downloaded the nostalgia games appliance to test the cluster with so this is all that is setup in the cluster. The exact configuration worked without changing reservations on constraint settings in 3.5 have things changed that much in version 4 ??

[admin]

Static overhead memory estimation has changed in VI4 (to becomes more conservative) but your reservation doesn't look so big. Can you try remove the reservation (set to 0) and power on the vm?

[mattberry]

Removed it still no joy attached the error message I am getting if that helps ?

[admin]

Can you upload a screenshot of the cluster "resource allocation" tab?

[mattberry]

Here is the tab screenshot as requested.

[admin]

The total memory available in the cluster is only 211MB, so I presume each host has only around 105MB of memory. Is that correct? Even with no memory reservation, that may not be enough for the memory overhead of the vm.

[mattberry]

This is where it gets confusing as if you look at the screen shots the summary of my cluster shows the following:

Total CPU Resources: 12Ghz

Total Memory: 3.98Gb

As each of my machines has 2Gb RAM but is not being reported correctly as available resources ? The summary tab shows the correct information available to the cluster but resource allocation doesn't ? Is there an issue with DRS with the machines I am using ?

See attached screenshots as this is what is confusing me as it worked fine in the previous version as i mentioned before.

[patrickds]

Can you check Host memory reservation settings?

That memory must have gone somewhere

[admin]

The resources on the cluster summary tab are the total physical resources for all the hosts. The resources in the "resource allocation" tab show how much of those resources are available to vms - it looks like a lot of resources are consumed by the system (vmkernel, COS and management agents)

[mattberry]

What do you suggest I do in terms of getting a solution to this issue ? I have attached more screen shots as you can see this is not an over worked host as both have 2GB RAM each but I have even dropped the requirements to the VM to 4MB and it wont physically go any lower and still wont start.

[mattberry]

Additional screen shots here also.

[admin]

Can you upload one more screenshot? Go the host's "Configuration" tab and select "Memory" from the Hardware section - that should display a breakdown of how physical memory is being used.

[mattberry]

Here are some screenshots of the memory configuration on the hosts. Any ideas why it shows so much memory allocated to VM's when from my previous uploads it shows i have even tried dropping memory allocation to only 4Mb per machine.

[mattberry]

Has anyone got any ideas as to what is causing this issue as not heard anything since posting a few days ago.