This website runs in a virtual machine under vmware server. It is clustered between two servers using heartbeat and DRBD.
When VMware server starts up a virtual machine it generates a uuid (unique id) based on the machine it is running on and stores this in the .vmx file.
When heartbeat switches from slave to master, it will start VMware server (which is setup as a resource in the haresources file).
Virtual machines that you want started automatically when you start VMware server will not start because the uuid changes between the master and backup systems. To get around this problem always do the following:
- edit the .vmx file and add the following line
uuid.action = "keep"
If this is not done then everytime you try to run the virtual machine on the backup system in your cluster, VMware server will complain that the virtual machine has been copied or moved and it will not start it.
- set the virtual machine to power off when vmware is stopped. Do not set this to "suspend" or it will not restart on the backup machine.
This will allow the virtual machine to start properly on the backup machine.