An embodiment of the invention is directed to a method associated with a node comprising a hypervisor and guest VMs, each guest VM being managed by the hypervisor and disposed to run applications, the node being joined with other nodes to form an HA cluster. The method includes establishing an internal bidirectional communication channel between each guest VM and the hypervisor, and further includes sending commands and responses thereto through the channel, wherein respective commands manage a specified application running on the given guest VM. The messages are selectively monitored, to detect a failure condition associated with the specified application running on the given guest VM. Responsive to detecting a failure condition, action is taken to correct the failure condition, wherein the action includes sending at least one command through the internal channel from the hypervisor to the given guest VM.