Requirements:

1. Minimum of two ESXi hosts

2. Minimum of 3GB memory per host to install ESXi and enable HA

3. VMware vCenter Server

4. Shared Storage for virtual machines

5. Pingable gateway or other reliable address

Recommendation:

1. Redundant Management Network (not a requirement, but highly recommended)

2. Multiple shared datastores

Firewall Requirements

 

 Components of High Availability

 

Although HA is configured by vCenter and exchanges virtual machine state information with HA, vCenter is not involved when HA responds to failure. It is comforting to know that in case of a host failure containing the virtualized vCenter Server, HA takes care of the failure and restarts the vCenter Server on another host, including all other configured virtual machines from that failed host.

So, while HA, by design, will respond to failures without vCenter, HA relies on vCenter to be available to configure or monitor the cluster.

Basic design principles

1. In stateless environments, ensure vCenter and Auto Deploy are highly available as recovery time of your virtual machines might be dependent on them.

2. Understand the impact of virtualizing vCenter. Ensure it has high priority for restarts and ensure that services which vCenter Server depends on are available: DNS, AD and database.