6.5.1

Table Of Contents
Problem
The operation to unmount or remove a datastore fails if the datastore has any opened files. For these
user operations, the vSphere HA agent closes all the files that it has opened, for example, heartbeat files.
If the agent is not reachable by vCenter Server or the agent cannot flush out pending I/Os to close the
files, a The HA agent on host '{hostName}' failed to quiesce file activity on datastore
'{dsName} fault is triggered.
Cause
If the datastore to be unmounted or removed is used for heartbeating, vCenter Server excludes it from
heartbeating and chooses a new one. However, the agent does not receive the updated heartbeat
datastores if it is not reachable, that is, if the host is isolated or in a network partition. In such cases,
heartbeat files are not closed and the user operation fails. The operation can also fail if the datastore is
not accessible because of storage failures such as all paths down.
Note When you remove a VMFS datastore, the datastore is removed from all the hosts in inventory. So
if there are any hosts in a vSphere HA cluster that are unreachable or that cannot access the datastore,
the operation fails.
Solution
Ensure that the datastore is accessible and the affected hosts are reachable.
Troubleshooting vSphere HA Failure Response
vSphere HA provides high availability for virtual machines by pooling them and the hosts that they reside
on into a cluster. Hosts in the cluster are monitored and in the event of a failure, the virtual machines on a
failed host are restarted on alternate hosts.
There are various reasons why affected virtual machines might not be restarted and if this happens you
should troubleshoot to determine the cause.
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.
vSphere Troubleshooting
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