1) Login to your VCenter server
2) Right click your data centre, or create a new data centre if one does not already exist, and then right click and select Create New Cluster
3) Click ‘Turn On vSphere HA’ and ‘Turn On vSphere DRS’ if you’re license covers both options. I prefer both options when I configure a VMWare environment. If it’s a production environment, DRS is a must.
4) Click next, I leave the default settings but requirements may be different depending on the solution
5) Again, I leave the defaults but requirements may be different depending on the solution
6) Click next, and again I leave the defaults unless there is a requirement to change. The below settings can also depend on the size of the VMWare environment. you may prefer the VMWare Solution to continue operating with more then one host failure.
7) Click next, and select your requirements for HA
8) Click next, and enable VM Monitoring Status if required. I leave this disabled due it not always being consistent. For example, if VMWare tools stops responding for some reason but the Virtual Machine was still up, the server could reboot if VMware Monitoring did not receive a response from VMWare tools. The feature may have been improved on in later versions of VMWare.
9) Click next and select EVC options.
10) Click next and configure vSwap location. I have already specified the vSwap file at the ESXi level.
11) Confirm your settings and click finish
12) Finally. go through the settings after the cluster has been created and configure Datastore heartbeat and any DRS rules you wish to apply. For example, you may prefer for a pair of clustered virtual servers to always remain on different ESXi hosts. This is where DRS rules would help.
