6.5

Table Of Contents
Procedure
1 Navigate to Server: Monitoring > Congure Failover to open the Server Monitoring: Failover
Conguration dialog.
2 The Failover timeout can be customized by changing the default value (60 seconds) to a custom value. Type
a new numeric value (seconds) in the Failover timeout text box or use the arrow buttons to congure how
long vCenter Server Heartbeat waits for a missed heartbeat before it takes a pre-congured action to
failover or isolate the active server from the network.
3 Select or clear check boxes for the items listed below to select the actions to take if the specied Failover
timeout is exceeded.
When the congured Failover timeout value has elapsed, vCenter Server Heartbeat will evaluate, in order,
the following pre-congured rules before taking action:
Failover from Primary server to Secondary server if channel heartbeat is lost for failover timeout
Failover from Secondary server to Primary server if channel heartbeat is lost for failover timeout
Prevent failover or auto switchover while not synchronized
Prevent Failover if channel heartbeat is lost but Active server is still visible to other servers
Make the server passive if the Channel and Public networks are lost for the congured failover timeout
Note If a rule is not selected, vCenter Server Heartbeat will skip the rule and move to the next rule in
the list. After all selected rules have been evaluated vCenter Server Heartbeat will take action.
4 Click OK.
Important If either Server: Monitoring Ping Routing or Network Monitoring Ping Routing is miscongured,
unpredictable behavior can occur.
Typical Failover and Active Server Isolation Scenarios
The following scenarios assume that vCenter Server Heartbeat is deployed in a LAN with all rules selected in
the Server: Monitoring > Congure Failover > Failover Conguration dialog.
Failover
The following scenario assumes the active server has failed and is no longer available.
Upon detection of missed heartbeats, vCenter Server Heartbeat on the passive server performs the following
steps:
1 As soon as the passive server detects that the VMware Channel is experiencing missed heartbeats. It will
attempt to ping the active server's Management IP address via the Public network using the passive server's
NIC congured with the Management IP address. If the ping is successful, the passive server will veto
the failover. If the ping is unsuccessful, it will continue to the next step.
Note Since the passive server assumes that active server has failed, the passive server will not attempt
to verify synchronization with the active server.
2 At this point, the passive server checks the congured value of the Failover timeout and starts a "Heartbeat
lost" countdown The passive server continues with the next step.
32 VMware, Inc.
Administrator Guide