VSA 12.0 - Can't add FOM

[Headgeek]

I am trying to set up a very small lab environment with VSA 12.0 and Vsphere. It consists of 2 Vsphere hosts and a Vcenter server on an isolated network -- no outside/internet access. The Hosts are Vsphere 6.0 and have 3 nics configured. 2 nics are 10GB and are connected with 2 crossover cables between the Vsphere hosts.  This is the iSCSI network. The 3rd nic is plugged into a switch and is how the two hosts communicate to the VCenter server. The basic setup is working fine and I have VMs installed and all of the standard VM facilities are working great -- VMotion, Storage VMotion, etc.

The problem is with only 2 nodes, I don't have any automatic failover. So I would like a FOM. I don't have a 3rd VM Host so the only choice that I could think of was to put the Failover Manager on the VCenter server and run it under VMWare Player. Player installs fine, I can install the FOM and start it. I assign an IP address and find it from the CMC. This all works and it shows up as a Failover Manager. I disable the Virtual Manager and then try and add the FOM to my Management Group. It starts to add and then just hangs and spins. No Error messages but it never successfully adds the FOM to the Management Group. I let it run for over 30 minutes but it never completes. It says his F11 to stop which I do but it doesn't stop clearly and it looks like it is partially added.  Eventually I have to cancel the CMC with Task manager and remove it.

The only think I can think of is that the doc says the FOM needs to be on the iSCSI network. In my case that isn't possible because the VCenter server has no access to the iSCSI network. The iSCSI network is on a 172.20.x.y network that is only used between the 2 servers. I put it on the same network as the VSA management appliances whic is a 192.168.x.y network.

Any assistance would be greately appreciated. Manual intervention when a node fails is not an ideal situation.

[oikjn]

the FOM communicates with the other nodes over the iSCSI network.  I THINK v12.5 adds the ability to manage the group using a dedicated NIC, but I"M not sure if that is just for CMC or also for the FOM.

Maybe v12.5 changed things, but for v12 and earlier I"M 100% sure that the FOM has to be either on the same subnet with the other nodes or at least has to have a routed method for communication to those nodes.  I"m a Hyper-V guy so I don't know if this is possible, but unless you can use esx to act as a gateway to allow network traffic to that network, you cannot add a FOM.

[giladzzz · Accepted solution]

Hi

the FOM has to communicate with  the Iscsi network otherwize it will not work

if you are able to have routing between the networks it will work.

in version 12.5 there is a possibility to work without the FOM

read the release notes.

maybee this will solve your problem

Regards

[Headgeek]

Thanks for the tip. You are correct. Quorum Witness is a new feature in 12.5 and it sounds like does everything that I want. Essentially it allows you to have a highly available 2 cluster system. I believe all I need to do is configure NFS on my Virtual Center server and enable Quorum Witness. It will take a little bit of testing and and an upgrade to 12.5 but it all makes sense. Microsoft clustering has the same option where you can have your Witness on a file share so this seems like a very reasonable and good solution.