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ESXi 3 Hosts without swap enabled cannot be added to a VMware High Availability Cluster

Details

  • ESXi 3 hosts that do not have swap enabled cannot be added to a VMware High Availability (HA) cluster.
  • You may see the error:

    cmd addnode failed for primary node: Internal AAM Error - agent could not start

Solution

Starting with VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 1, only ESX Server 3i systems with swap enabled can be added to an HA cluster.   ESX Server 3i systems with swap not enabled cannot be added to HA clusters, and display an error message similar to the following: 
 
An error occurred during configuration of the HA agent of the host.
 
The Tasks & Events page of such a ESXi 3 Server system describes the error with a description similar to the following: 
 
HA agent has an error : Host in HA Cluster must have userworld swap enabled
 
To enable swap on your ESXi 3 host system:
  1. On the VirtualCenter Server, select the ESXi 3 Server host.
  2. Click the Configuration tab.
  3. Click Advanced Settings.
  4. Choose ScratchConfig.

  5. Configure ScratchConfig.ConfiguredScratchLocation to a valid directory with sufficient space (1GB) to hold the userworld swap file. The userworld swap can be configured on local storage or shared storage.

    Note: Each swapfile needs a unique name across all ESX hosts.

    For example, /vmfs/volumes/<DatastoreName>.

  6. Select the ScratchConfig.ConfiguredSwapState option.
  7. Click OK.
  8. Reboot the ESX Server 3i system.
After you have enabled swap on the ESXi 3 host system, you can add the host to a VMware HA cluster.
 
Note: This solution also applies for Update 2.

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Actions
  • KB Article: 1004177
  • Updated: Jun 1, 2009
  • Products:
    VMware ESXi
    VMware VirtualCenter
  • Product Versions:
    VMware VirtualCenter 2.5.x
    VMware ESXi 3.5.x Embedded
    VMware ESXi 3.5.x Installable