Troubleshooting VMware High Availability (HA) issues in VMware vCenter Server

In this article, I will be discussing a recent ticket I received from a customer who was receiving alerts about the “vSphere HA host status” in their 2-host setup. I will cover the steps I took to resolve this issue.

To begin with, let’s understand what vSphere HA is. It is a feature of VMware’s vSphere virtualization platform that provides automatic recovery for virtual machines in the event of a host failure. When a host failure occurs, vSphere HA automatically restarts the affected virtual machines on other available hosts in the cluster, ensuring minimal downtime and service disruption.

Moving on to the troubleshooting steps I took:

Table of Contents

Troubleshoot #1:

Logged in to the vCenter and clicked on the cluster level.
Went to config and navigated to the vSphere HA and disabled and enabled it.
However, this did not resolve the issue.

Troubleshoot #2:

Tried to disconnect and reconnect the host.
Checked the vSphere HA, but the alarm was still showing.

Troubleshoot #3:

Disabled the vSphere HA from the cluster level.

Logged in to one of the ESXi and checked if FDM vib was present using the command –

esxcli software vib list |grep fdm

Since FDM vib was present, I removed it using the command –

esxcli software vib remove -n vmware-fdm -f

Now, login to the vCenter and using the below command copied FDM vib to the ESXI using the command –

cd /etc/vmware-vpx/docRoot/vSphere-HA-depot/vib20/vmware-fdm/

scp VMware_bootbank_/VMware_bootbank_vmware-fdm_x.x.0-xxxxxx.vib root@<esxi-ip>:/tmp

Installed FDM VIB again using the command –

esxcli software vib install -v /tmp/VMware_bootbank_vmware-fdm_x.x.0-xxxxxx.vib -f

Verified the FDM vib in the host using the command –

esxcli software vib list |grep fdm

Started the vSphere HA services from the cluster level, and the alert disappeared.

In conclusion, I hope this article has been helpful to you. If you have any doubts while implementing these steps, feel free to let me know in the comments, and I will be happy to assist you. If you are still facing any issues, you can connect with me over Twitter.