Service Console Redundancy for VMware High Availability
Details
An ESX host in a VMware HA cluster considers itself isolated and powers off all virtual machines running on it (so that other members of the cluster can power on those virtual machines) if:
It cannot ping any other ESX host in the cluster
It cannot ping its default gateway
Since VMware HA only monitors service console network, an ESX host powers off all the virtual machines running on it if it looses its service console network (bad cable, bad NIC, physical switch port problems etc). This happens even if the virtual machine network is functioning properly because VMware HA does not monitor the virtual machine network. This leaves many environments vulnerable to have their virtual machines shut down in case service console network goes down.
Solution
To overcome this issue, you can configure an additional service console for redundancy. Having an additional service console on a separate vSwitch bound to a different vmnic which is attached to a different physical switch ensures that VMware HA does not power off virtual machines if primary service console network goes down. If primary service console network fails, it continues functioning by using the 2nd service console.
