VMware Clustering vCenter Server 4 on MSCS

wjpatton — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:21:23 +0000

*NOTICE* As of July 16, 2010 – VMware KB1024051 – has been published stating that “VMware does not support third party clustering products.” The instructions below should not be used for any production or supported environment.

VIOPS has a good document on how to cluster the vCenter services on MSCS. Things have changed slightly from 2.5 and though most of the steps will be old news for some, there are a couple changes so be sure to review before proceeding with your Install/Upgrade projects. It does have a nice section on upgrading existing clusters as well.

Get the document here.

One special note I would point out is running the “jointool.bat” for replicating roles at the end of your cluster config.

VMware KB1003797 – Unable to migrate: Virtual machine is configured to use a device that prevents migration

wjpatton — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 19:13:26 +0000

There seems to be a lot of confusion about vMotion and bus-shared VMDKs. For the record, and from VMware, it is not recommended nor supported to vMotion your VM between ESX Hosts when using either Virtual or Physical mode bus-sharing.

Please see the KB here.

I know there are plenty that will disagree and have found ways of doing it, but within our environments for our MSCS clusters using Physical mode, we disable DRS and only Cold vMotion once the resources of the cluster have been moved off the Node and the VM is Powered Off.

WJPatton.com » MSCS

VMware Clustering vCenter Server 4 on MSCS

VMware KB1003797 – Unable to migrate: Virtual machine is configured to use a device that prevents migration