Specifications

VMware, Inc. 183
Chapter 13 Troubleshooting
Two Passive Servers
Primary and Secondary servers are both passive at the same time. This situation is serious and must be
resolved immediately.
Symptom
You are unable to connect to protected applications, and if you configured alerts, you receive notification that
replication is not functioning properly.
Causes
The condition of two passive servers results from a sudden failure on the active server. Examples:
 An unexpected termination of the Neverfail Server R2 service
 A transient power failure
 A server reset triggered from the Power or Reset button
 An unclean shutdown. Following an unclean shutdown, an active server assumes the passive role to
isolate itself from the network until the failure is investigated.
 The active server fails before the handshake that establishes the VMware Channel connection. The passive
server cannot detect that the active server is not responding when the failure occurs and cannot determine
the condition of the active server. The active server suffers a transient failure and the passive server cannot
respond by failing over into the active role, leaving both servers in the passive role.
 Both Primary and Secondary servers experience a power outage simultaneously, for example, they use the
same power source and neither is attached to a UPS. A failover cannot occur and when the servers are
restarted, each displays the following error message:
Cannot start replication because previous run did not shutdown properly. Check configuration.
Resolution
Two passive servers prevent users from accessing the protected application and should be resolved
immediately.
To resolve two passive servers
1 Determine the active server.
2 Shut down vCenter Server Heartbeat on both servers. Leave any protected applications running on the
server to make active.
3 On the server to make active, start the Server Configuration wizard, and select the active role. Do not
change the identity (Primary or Secondary).
4 On the server to make passive, start the Server Configuration wizard, and confirm the passive server. Do
not change the identity (Primary or Secondary).
5 Restart the passive server. All protected application services stop.
6 Start vCenter Server Heartbeat on both servers.
N
OTE If you attempt to start vCenter Server Heartbeat without reconfiguring one server in the pair as active,
vCenter Server Heartbeat responds with the following warning:
[U16] Serious configuration mismatch between the two servers. Please reconfigure so there is one
and only one Primary, and one and only one Active.