Remote restart all virtual machines from a failed host

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You can use PowerVC to remotely restart virtual machines from a failed host (source host) to another host (destination host). After the failed host is restarted, any virtual machines that were remotely restarted are removed from that host, but they will remain on the destination host. The count of virtual machines is updated on the source host when it is restarted.

Note: For HMC, only virtual machines that are using dedicated processors or assigned to the default processor pool can be remote restarted. See the Multiple shared processor pools topic for more details.
If the host goes down unexpectedly, follow these steps to remote restart one or more virtual machines:
  1. Ensure that all remote restart requirements are met. See Virtual machine remote restart requirements for details.
  2. From the Hosts page, select the failed host and click Remote Restart Virtual Machines. You can select one or all virtual machines that must be remote restarted. See Planning for performance for more details on possible number of concurrent remote restarts of virtual machines on the source and destination hosts.

When you select to remote restart all virtual machines on a failed host, the host goes through several transitions with the following host states while the virtual machines are moved to the destination host.

  • Remote Restart Started: PowerVC is preparing to rebuild the virtual machines. This process can take up to one minute.
  • Remote Restart Rebuilding: PowerVC is in the process of rebuilding virtual machines. After the virtual machines are remote restarted to the destination host, the source host goes back to displaying its state.
  • Remote Restart Error: An error occurred while moving one or more virtual machines to the destination host. You can check reasons for the failure in the corresponding compute log file in the /var/log/nova directory.

While PowerVC is automatically rebuilding the virtual machines, it respects the maximum number of concurrent remote restarts on the source and destination hosts. PowerVC also distributes the virtual machines (based on the placement policy that is enabled) on the available hosts if the destination host is not selected for the remote restart operation.