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Table Of Contents
Solution
To fix this condition, check the vSphere HA host states reported by vCenter Server. If hosts are identified as
partitioned, isolated, or unreachable, resolve the problem before proceeding. In some situations, you can
resolve a restart problem by reconfiguring vSphere HA on the host that vCenter Server is reporting as the
master host. However, in most situations, this step is insufficient, and you must resolve all host state
problems.
After you have addressed any host state problems, check if there are any hosts in the cluster other than the
Primary VM's that are compatible with the FT virtual machine pair. You can determine compatibility by
trying to migrate the Primary VM to other hosts. Address any incompatibilities that are discovered.
Role Switch Behavior Problems
vCenter Server can report that the Primary VM of a vSphere Fault Tolerance virtual machine pair is
powered off, but the Secondary VM is powered on.
Problem
After a failover occurs, vCenter Server might incorrectly report that the Primary VM is powered off and
registered to its original host, and that the Secondary VM is powered on and registered to its original host.
Cause
This error occurs when vCenter Server is unable to communicate with the hosts on which the Primary VM
and Secondary VM are actually running. vCenter Server reports these hosts as not responding and the
problem persists until vCenter Server is able to communicate with the hosts.
Solution
To fix this problem, resolve the networking problem that is preventing vCenter Server from communicating
with the hosts in the cluster.
Troubleshooting VM Component Protection
If you enable VM Component Protection (VMCP) for your vSphere HA cluster it provides protection against
datastore accessibility failures that can affect a virtual machine running on one of the cluster's hosts.
If the response that you have configured VMCP to make for such a failure is not executed, you should
troubleshoot to determine the cause.
VM with a Swapfile on a Local Datastore is Not Protected
VMCP might not be able to find a compatible host for a virtual machine if its swapfile is on a local datastore.
Problem
If a virtual machine has its swapfile configured to be on a host-local datastore rather than in the default
directory where the VM's configuration file resides, VMCP might not restart the VM on a healthy host if it is
affected by an All Paths Down (APD) datastore accessibility failure.
Cause
VMCP monitors the list of datastores that a virtual machine depends on, including the datastores where the
VM's configuration file, swapfile and disks reside. When an APD failure is detected on a dependent
datastore, VMCP first determines if there is another host which is compatible and has sufficient capacity to
failover the affected VM to. To determine this compatibility, VMCP considers the dependent datastores
along with other factors such as CPU and memory reservations. If a suitable host is found, VMCP
terminates the VM on the host that experienced the APD failure.
Chapter 5 Troubleshooting Availability
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