"HA agent on the host has been shut down"

[TheVMinator]

After vmotioning a number of vms to an esx host I'm getting an error on that host that "HA agent on [host] in cluster [clustername] in [datacentername] has an error : HA agent on the host has been shut down"  What could be causing this?

Thanks

[Troy_Clavell]

have you tried to right click on the host and "reconfigure for HA"?  Also, you could disconnect, then connect host again, that will push the agent install again.

[TheVMinator]

Will "reconfigure for ha" interrupt service for VMs on that host?  In the meantime, will vms already on that host be restarted on other hosts if the agent isn't communicating?

Thanks

[Troy_Clavell · Accepted solution]

"reconfigure for ha" will not impact any running VM's nor will it kick off an HA event, you're just working with the HA agent, that is it.

[depping]

The HA agent will not touch the VMs. Those VMs will remain running even when the HA agent is re-installed or re-configured.

Duncan (VCDX)

Available now on Amazon: vSphere 4.1 HA and DRS technical deepdive

[bulletprooffool]

Enabling, disabling and reconfiguring hosts for HA does not chaneg the VM states in any way - they will not be affected.

EWhat it does is it enables / installs the HA services on the nodes in the cluster and goes about identifying how to handle HA detection events etc - so that in the event of a host being lost, VMs can b estarter on different hosts in the cluster.

It is strange that the agent has shut down, if it was previously working OK. Have you made any recent changes? For example, have you added new PortGroups / Storage to some hosts in the cluster . .and not others? Or possible created these on all hosts, but with inconsistent naming?

[TheVMinator]

Thanks for the input.  As for recent changes, there were some RAM upgrades.  Also a few virtual switches had ports added to make all virtual switches consistent - they weren't before.  No other changes that I know of.  "Reconfigure for VMware HA" fixed the problem but not sure what caused it.