Creating a vSphere HA cluster

Before HA can be enabled, a cluster itself needs to be created. To create a new cluster, right-click on the datacenter object in the Hosts and Clusters view and select New Cluster... as shown in the following screenshot:

The following prerequisites have to be considered before setting up a HA cluster:

• All the hosts must be licensed for vSphere HA.

  Note

  ESX/ESXi 3.5 hosts are supported for vSphere HA with the following patches installed; these fix an issue involving file locks:

  ESX 3.5: patch ESX350-201012401-SG and prerequisites

  ESXi 3.5: patch ESXe350-201012401-I-BG and prerequisites

• At least two hosts must exist in the cluster.

• All the hosts' IP addresses need to be assigned statically or configured via DHCP with static reservations to ensure address consistency across host reboots.

• At least one network should exist that is shared by all the hosts, that is, a management network. It is best practice to have at least two (see Chapter 2, Managing ESXi Hosts, for more...