Installation guide

Installation Guide
14 VMware, Inc.
Figure 1-5. Switchover
A managed switchover performs the following steps:
1 Stop the protected applications on the active server. After the protected applications stop, no more disk
updates are generated.
2 Send all updates that are still queued on the active server to the passive server. After this step, all updates
are available on the passive server.
3 Re-designate the Secondary server as the new active server. After this step, vCenter Server Heartbeat:
 Hides the previously active server from the network.
 Makes the newly active server visible on the network. The newly active server begins to intercept and
queue disk I/O operations for the newly passive server.
4 vCenter Server Heartbeat causes the newly passive server to begin accepting updates from the active
server.
5 vCenter Server Heartbeat starts the same protected applications on the new active server. The protected
applications become accessible to users. The managed switchover is complete.
Automatic Switchover
Automatic switchover (auto-switchover) is similar to failover (discussed in the next section) but is triggered
automatically when system monitoring detects failure of a protected application.
Like managed switchover, auto-switchover changes the server roles but then stops vCenter Server Heartbeat
on the previously active server to allow the administrator to investigate the cause of the auto-switchover and
verify the integrity of the data.
After the cause for the auto-switchover is determined and corrected, the administrator can use vCenter Server
Heartbeat Console to return the server roles to their original state.
Automatic Failover
Automatic failover is similar to automatic switchover (discussed above) but is triggered when the passive
server detects that the active server is no longer running properly and assumes the role of the active server.