vSphere HA and short hostnames

I’m upgrading my home-lab environment to the GA release of vSphere. After enabling HA on my two node cluster there was trouble in paradise. Every time I “turned on VMware HA” the task eventually resulted in an unknown HA error. This usually happened around the 84%. I investigated two interesting log files which can be found at /var/log/vmware/aam.

aam_config_util_addnode.log

05/26/09 09:48:17 [issue_cmd           ] No AAM Primary Agents were found that would accept our connection.
05/26/09 09:48:17 [issue_cmd           ] Connection Unsuccessfully attempted at:
05/26/09 09:48:17 [issue_cmd           ]
05/26/09 09:48:17 [active_primary_ftcli] command did not run successfully on 'esx4-r'.
05/26/09 09:48:17 [active_primary_ftcli] 'esx-r' would not accept our connection.
05/26/09 09:48:17 [find_active_primary ] attempting to find an active primary.
05/26/09 09:48:17 [issue_cli_cmd       ] command is '/opt/vmware/aam/bin/ftcli -domain vmware -cmd "la -l"'
05/26/09 09:48:17 [issue_cmd           ] CMD:    /opt/vmware/aam/bin/ftcli -domain vmware -cmd "la -l"
05/26/09 09:48:17 [issue_cmd           ] STATUS: 1
05/26/09 09:48:17 [issue_cmd           ] RESULT:
05/26/09 09:48:17 [issue_cmd           ] Unable to get Fully Qualified Domain Name
05/26/09 09:48:17 [issue_cmd           ] [Err:0] Unable to get Fully Qualified Domain Name

aam_config_util_listprimaries.log

05/26/09 10:17:09 [print_args          ] KEY: cmd VAL: listprimaries
05/26/09 10:17:09 [print_args          ] KEY: -z VAL: 1
05/26/09 10:17:09 [print_args          ] KEY: uname VAL: Linux
05/26/09 10:17:09 [print_args          ] KEY: shortname VAL: esx4-l
05/26/09 10:17:09 [print_args          ] KEY: domain VAL: vmware
05/26/09 10:17:14 [issue_cmd           ] CMD:    /opt/vmware/aam/bin/ft_gethostbyname esx4-l |grep FAILED
05/26/09 10:17:14 [issue_cmd           ] STATUS: 0
05/26/09 10:17:14 [issue_cmd           ] RESULT:
05/26/09 10:17:14 [issue_cmd           ] ft_gethostbyname(esx4-l) FAILED

Ok, that sounds fair, there is a problem with hostname resolution, and this is the most common error source for VMware HA problems. Since I didn’t have a proper DNS server in my lab, I was relying on host files. Eventually the problem was caused by the short host name. When editing your host files don’t forget to add the short hostname after the fully qualified domain name.

192.168.178.180 myserver.domain.com myserver

Comments

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That is good information to know. Thank you Eric. Throughout VI3, it was my standard practice to populate the /etc/hosts file with both the long and the short name of all ESX hosts in the cluster due to prior versions of VI3 being heavily dependent on DNS name resolution (for both long and short names). While this DNS dependence was resolved with newer 3.5 builds, based on your experience it appears DNS problems have resurfaced. I would not classify this as a showstopper but it is an annoyance - one that VMware and its end users have already learned once. I would question why we are going back down this road once again. Another thing I learned from this blog entry is that multiple host name entries can be place on a single line. ie. 192.168.178.180 myserver.domain.com myserver Whereas my host files look like: 192.168.178.180 myserver.domain.com 192.168.178.180 myserver

#1 Jason Boche (Homepage) on 2009-05-26 14:31 (Reply)

Just a thought. Would it depend on how you add your server to vCenter? I always add my ESX hosts with the FQDN and not by its shortname.

#2 Arnim van Lieshout (Homepage) on 2009-05-26 14:55 (Reply)

Thanks for sharing this info with us Eric! @Eric: Did you use the same lookup domain for the ESX host as you used in the /etc/hosts file for the FQDN? @Jason: I don't think that DNS problems like in prior ESX 3.5 U3 versions will resurface, but like Eric mentioned he doesn't have DNS in his lab setup so that will be the problem... Adding the short host name to the /etc/hosts file fixed his problem.

#3 Eric van der Meer on 2009-05-27 20:30 (Reply)

I must admit, I made a typo in my hostfile :-}

#3.1 Eric Sloof on 2009-05-27 20:36 (Reply)

Because of your typo, vSphere is a showstopper for Jason. I hope he reads your reply on this topic...

#4 Eric van der Meer on 2009-05-27 20:53 (Reply)

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Tuesday, 26 May 2009

vSphere HA and short hostnames

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