2. Move Host into Maintenance
In the previous section you watched a user-triggered live migration of virtual machines. Manually activating live migration is useful for occasions when hosts are brought down for maintenance. The virtual machines on the host which is being placed into maintenance can be automatically live migrated to another host in the cluster, provided that power management has been properly configured for the hosts. More information on configuring power management can be found in Advanced Lab 6 - High Availability Scenarios.
To move a host into maintenance mode
Navigate to the Tree pane and click Expand All. Under Clusters, click the Hosts icon. The list of available hosts is displayed in the Hosts tab.
Select the host and click the
Maintenance button. In this example, select the
Atlantic host.
Figure 27. Move a host into maintenance
Click OK. This migrates all virtual machines to alternative hosts, and places the Atlantic
host into maintenance. The Status field of the host changes to Preparing for Maintenance, followed by Maintenance. The icon changes to indicate that the host is in maintenance.
Now, it is safe to perform an upgrade, or any other schedule maintenance, on the host. After you have completed your maintenance, reactivate the host by selecting it and clicking the Activate button.