I have 3 ESXi hosts running in a vCenter cluster. I need to configure the virtual machines on them to start up automatically as they could potentially be shut down by a UPS.
I have HA enabled which should start VMs up automatically but the only problem is that th vCenter and supporting SQL Server are virtual machines in the cluter they are managing. Automatic startup (configured on the host) and HA do not play well together. Configuring auto startup in a HA cluster causes errors when vmotioning. HA coming online removes the auto start configuration from the hosts. That second part can work to my advantage if I can configure auto start when the cluster is being shut down, bring the SQL and vCenter back online and let HA take care of the other VMs and removing auto start.
Shutdown is handled by a lamws upsVIShutdown.pl/ghettoShutdown.pl scripts.
Extending upsVIShutdown.pl looks like it should be simple, but I'm not too familiar with the API. Does anyone know how I can create an instance of a VM object by passing a VM name? (All the scripts I've seen so far simply iterate through a list of all VMs) and how to configure automatic startup delays on the VM object? And presumably I would need to enable virtual machines starting up and shutting down with the host?
Any help would be greatly appreciated