6.4

Installation Guide
16 VMware, Inc.
When deployed in a LAN, the Principal (Public) NIC on the passive server is configured to use its unique
permanently assigned management IP address. When a switchover or failover occurs, the Principal (Public)
IP address assigned to the previously active server is removed from the active server and reassigned to the
previously passive server. Once the previously passive server becomes active, users connect to the new active
server. The previously active server becomes passive and is assigned its unique management IP address.
The NICs on the active and passive servers used for the VMware Channel are configured so that their IP
addresses are outside of the subnet range of the Principal (Public) network. These addresses are referred to as
VMware Channel addresses.
During installation, setup will switch off NetBIOS for the VMware Channel(s) on the active and passive
servers as this connection remains live and both the passive and active machines have the same NetBIOS name.
Following vCenter Server Heartbeat installation (runtime), NetBIOS is disabled across the channel(s).
The NICs that support connectivity across the VMware Channel can be standard 100BaseT Ethernet cards
providing a throughput of 100 Mbits per second across standard Cat-5 cabling. In its most basic form, a
dedicated channel requires no hubs or routers, but the direct connection requires crossover cabling.
When configured for a WAN deployment, configure the VMware Channel to use static routes over switches
and routers to maintain continuous communications independent from corporate or public traffic.
vCenter Server Heartbeat Switchover and Failover Processes
vCenter Server Heartbeat uses four different procedures — managed switchover, automatic switchover,
automatic failover, and managed failover — to change the role of the active and passive servers depending on
the status of the active server.
Managed Switchover
You can click Make Active on the vCenter Server Heartbeat Console Server: Summary page to manually
initiate a managed switchover. When a managed switchover is triggered, the running of protected applications
is transferred from the active machine to the passive machine in the server pair. The server roles are reversed.
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:
N
OTE Obtain the IP address: type ipconfig at the prompt in a DOS shell. For additional information about
the IP configuration, add the switch /All to the ipconfig command.