HA, VM and DRS Advanced Options
| HA Cluster level settings | |
| Option | Description |
|
das.IsolationAddress[x] |
Sets the address to ping to determine if a host is isolated from the network,i.e. receives no heartbeat. This address has to be some reliable address that is available, so that the host can determine if it is isolated from the network. If this option is not specified, the default gateway of the management network is used. Multiple isolation addresses (up to 10) can be specified for the cluster: das.IsolationAddress[x], where [x] = 1-10. As a best practice, add a second management network for redundancy. |
|
das.UseDefaultIsolationAddress |
By default, HA uses the default gateway of the management network as an isolation address. This attribute specifies whether that should be used or not (true|false). Should be set to false in case the default gateway should not or cannot be used for this purpose. So if default gateway is a non-pingable address, set das.IsolationAddress to a pingable address and disable the use of default gateway by setting this to 'false'. During configuration vSphere 4.0 will verify if the isolation addresses are pingable and will raise a configuration issue if they are not. |
|
das.FailureDetectionTime |
This is the timout time (in milliseconds) for isolation response action. Default of 15000 milliseconds. For hosts with two management networks or a secondary isolation address it is best practice to increase this value to 20000. Note: this will however impact the failover response by delaying it some more. |
|
das.PowerOffOnIsolation |
Setting the Isolation response. Values are False or True. By default a VM will be powered off. |
|
das.IsolationShutdownTimeout |
Shutdown time out for the isolation response "Shutdown VM", default is 300 seconds. In other words, if a VM isn't shutdown clean when isolation response occurred, it will be powered off after 300 seconds. |
|
das.DefaultFailoverHost |
If this is set, HA tries to fail over hosts to the host specified by this option. This attribute is useful to utilize one host as a spare failover host (this host will be the primary failover host), but is not recommended, because HA tries to utilize all available spare capacity among all hosts in the cluster. If the specified host does not have enough spare capacity, HA tries to fail over the virtual machine to any other host in the cluster that has enough capacity. |
|
das.FailureDetectionInverval |
Changes the heartbeat interval among HA hosts. By default, this occurs every second (1000 milliseconds). |
|
das.vmMemoryMinMB |
Specifies the minimum default slotsize (in megabytes) used for calculating failover capacity. This should be an amount of memory sufficient for any virtual machine in the cluster to be usable. This value is used only if the memory reservation is not specified for the virtual machine and is used for HA admission control and calculating the current failover level. If no value is specified, the default is 256MB. Higher values will reserve more space for failovers. Do not confuse this setting with das.slotMemInMB. |
|
das.vmCpuMinMHz |
Specifies the minimum default slotsize (in megahertz) used for calculating failover capacity. This should be an amount of CPU sufficient for any virtual machine in the cluster to be usable. This value is used only if the CPU reservation is not specified for the virtual machine and is used for HA admission control and calculating the current failover level. If no value is specified, the default is 256MHz. Higher values will reserve more space for failovers. Do not confuse this setting with das.slotCpuInMHz. |
|
das.slotMemInMB |
Sets the slotsize for memory to the specified value. This setting can be used when a virtual machine with a large memory reservation would otherwise throw off (skew) slot size calculation, as this would typically result in a much more conservative number of available slots. The actual slot size will be the smaller of this value or the maximum memory reservation (plus memory overhead) of any powered-on VM in the cluster. |
|
das.slotCPUInMhz |
Sets the slotsize for CPU to the specified value. This setting can be used when a virtual machine with a large CPUreservation would otherwise throw off (skew) slot size calculation, as this would typically result in a much more conservative number of available slots. The actual slot size will be the smaller of this value or the maximum CPU reservation of any powered-on VM in the cluster. |
|
das.AllowVmotionNetworks |
Allows a NIC that is used for VMotion networks to be considered for VMware HA usage. This permits a host to have only one NIC configured for management and VMotion combined. |
|
das.AllowNetwork[x] |
Enables the use of port group names to control the networks used for VMware HA, where [x] is a number between 0 and 10. You can set the value to be "Service Console 2" or "Management Network" to use (only) the networks associated with those port group names in the networking configuration. Note: The number [x] has no relationship with the network, it only provides a way to specify multiple networks. |
|
das.bypassNetCompatCheck |
Disable the "compatible network" check for HA that was introduced (p.123) with Update 2.
|
|
das.ignoreRedundantNetWarning |
Remove the error icon/message (yellow triangle) from vCenter when no redundant management network is present. Set to TRUE and reconfigure HA on the host to make the configuration issue go away. |
|
das.sensorPollingFreq |
Sets the time interval for status updates, as of vSphere 4.1. The default value is 10. Can be configured between 1 and 30. Not recommended to decrease this value, because this might lead to less scalability due to the increased overhead of the status updates. |
|
das.iostatsinterval |
Changes the default I/O stats interval for VM Monitoring
sensitivity. The default is 120 (seconds). Can be set to any value greater than, or equal to 0. Setting to 0 disables the check. |
|
das.ignoreinsufficienthbdatastore |
Disables configuration issues created if the host does not have sufficient heartbeat datastores for vSphere HA. Default value is false. |
|
das.heartbeatdsperhost |
Changes the number of heartbeat datastores required. Valid values can range from 2-5. Default value is 2. |
| VM level settings | (since vSphere 4.0 also available in the vSphere client GUI) VM Monitoring |
| Option | Description |
|
das.vmFailoverEnabled |
Set this option to true to enable Virtual Machine Failure Monitoring for the entire cluster. (true or false) Default: false (disabled) |
|
das.failureInterval |
The polling interval for failures in seconds. Default: 30 seconds. Declare virtual machine failure if no heartbeat is received for the specified number of seconds. |
|
das.minUptime |
The minimum uptime in seconds before VM Monitoring starts polling. Default: 120 seconds. After a virtual machine has been powered on, its heartbeats are allowed to stabilize for the specified number of seconds. This time should include the guest operating system Boot-up time. |
|
das.maxFailures |
The maximum number of virtual machine failures and automated resets allowed within the specified 'das.maxFailureWindow'. The default is 3. If this number is reached VM Monitoring does not restart the VM automatically. If das.maxFailureWindow is -1 (no window), das.maxFailures represents the absolute number of failures after which automated response is stopped and further investigation is necessary. |
|
das.maxFailureWindow |
Minimum amount of seconds between failures. The default is 3600 seconds. If a virtual machine fails more than das.maxFailures within 3600 seconds VM Monitoring does not restart the machine. The value -1 sets: no failure window |
| Advanced DRS options | |
| Option | Description |
|
MaxMovesPerHost |
The maximum number of migrations DRS will recommend per interval per host. Although the parameter still exists, as of vSphere 4.1 when not specified, the maximum value is adaptive to the maximum number of concurrent vMotions per host and the average migration time observed during previous migrations. Therefor setting this parameter serves little purpose anymore. The default is 8. |
|
DumpSpace |
Controls the size of the log files per DRS cluster. Log files are held on VCenter server in %TMP%\vpx\drmdump\cluster#. The default is 20 MB. |
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