6.0.1

Table Of Contents
Incorrect Virtual Machine Protection State
A virtual machine in a vSphere HA cluster is reported as vSphere HA unprotected although it has been
powered on for several minutes.
Problem
When a virtual machine is powered on for several minutes, yet its vSphere HA protection state remains as
unprotected, if a failure occurs, vSphere HA might not attempt to restart the virtual machine.
Cause
vCenter Server reports a virtual machine as protected after the vSphere HA master host that is responsible
for the virtual machine has saved to disk the information that the virtual machine must be restarted after a
failure. This process can fail for a number of reasons.
n
vSphere HA master host has not been elected or vCenter Server is unable to communicate with it.
In this situation, vCenter Server reports the vSphere HA host state for the cluster hosts as Agent
Unreachable or Agent Uninitialized and reports a cluster configuration problem that a master host has
not been found.
n
Multiple master hosts exist and the one with which vCenter Server is communicating is not responsible
for the virtual machine.
Problems occur when vCenter Server is in contact with a master host, but due to a management
network partition, there are multiple master hosts, and the agent with which vCenter Server is
communicating is not responsible for the virtual machine. This situation is likely if vCenter Server is
reporting the vSphere HA state of some hosts as network partitioned.
n
Agent is unable to access the datastore on which the configuration file of the virtual machine is stored.
vCenter Server might be in contact with the vSphere HA master host that owns the virtual machine, but
the agent is unable to access the datastore on which the configuration file of the virtual machine is
stored. This situation can occur if an all paths down condition affects all hosts in the cluster.
Solution
1 Determine whether vCenter Server is in contact with a vSphere HA master host, and if not, address this
problem.
2 If vCenter Server is in contact with a master host, determine whether there is a network partition, and if
so, address that problem.
3 If the problem persists, determine if other virtual machines that use the same datastore for their
configuration files are also unprotected.
4 If these virtual machines are unprotected, verify that the vSphere HA master host can access the
datastore.
5 If none of the previous steps resolves the problem, restore protection by reconfiguring vSphere HA on
the host on which the virtual machine is running.
Virtual Machine Restart Fails
After a host or virtual machine failure, a virtual machine might not be restarted.
Problem
When a host fails or a virtual machine fails while its host continues running, the virtual machine might not
restart or restarts only after a long delay.
Chapter 5 Troubleshooting Availability
VMware, Inc. 47