can't get HA to be healthy

[mrose1120istar]

so, in my environment, we are slowly moving off of HP ESX 3.5 Update 1 servers to some new IBM Blades, which i freshly installed ESX 3.5 Update 3 on. The installs were fine, I upgraded Virtual Center, etc etc.

I can not get the new ESX 3.5 Update 3 servers to be happy in the HA Cluster. I've disabled it completely on the cluster, reenabled, taken the problematic ones out, put em back in, and even put them in their own cluster, and still no luck. There are 3 of the Update 1 servers, 2 Update 3. Any ideas? I have a case w/ VMWare open but they have been unresponsive all day.

Thanks in advance

[sbeaver]

What message or error are you getting? Did it ever work right? Anything in the logs?

Steve Beaver

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Co-Author of "VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center"

(ISBN:1420070274) from Auerbach

Come check out my blog: www.theVirtualBlackHole.com

*Virtualization is a journey, not a project.*

[java_cat33]

Is DNS ok? (forward and reverse)

[mrose1120istar]

dns is fine...

I'm noticing a weird error...first it was telling me something about Incompatible HA Networks. found some articles about that and used the advanced option of turning off the Network Compabilitiy check (bypassNetCompatCheck= I)

now I get an error cmd addnode failed for primary node: /opt/vmware/aam/bin/ft_startup failed

[sbeaver]

Check and make sure you have a gateway for the vmkernel / vMotion port group

[mrose1120istar]

i do

so i took out the new ESX 3.5 U3 servers out of hte cluster, and the old servers form a good cluster...then i went to add back the 1st of the new servers and i get an error cmd addnode failed for primary node: Unable to import /var/log/vmware/aam/aam_config_util.def

[Troy_Clavell]

see this KB

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1007234

[mrose1120istar]

heres what i think it might be, not sure how to fix it..

the old servers have a service console for the vsmith0, and another for iscsi, the new ones don't have the 2nd iscsi service console since they have an iscsi card built in and boot from iscsi.

[mrose1120istar]

alright...

so in reading more about this, i'm realizing one thing that may be causing this

My old ESX boxes have an iSCSI vmkernel and iscsi console to connect to the storage via iscsi, the new ones don't need that since its hardware initiator and they boot from iscsi.... I went through pinging everything and the new servers can ping the iscsi kernel address, but not the iscsi vmkernel.... is there a way to fix this? i'm not sure what to do