6.7
Table Of Contents
- vSphere Availability
- Contents
- About vSphere Availability
- Business Continuity and Minimizing Downtime
- Creating and Using vSphere HA Clusters
- Providing Fault Tolerance for Virtual Machines
- How Fault Tolerance Works
- Fault Tolerance Use Cases
- Fault Tolerance Requirements, Limits, and Licensing
- Fault Tolerance Interoperability
- Preparing Your Cluster and Hosts for Fault Tolerance
- Using Fault Tolerance
- Best Practices for Fault Tolerance
- Legacy Fault Tolerance
- Troubleshooting Fault Tolerant Virtual Machines
- Hardware Virtualization Not Enabled
- Compatible Hosts Not Available for Secondary VM
- Secondary VM on Overcommitted Host Degrades Performance of Primary VM
- Increased Network Latency Observed in FT Virtual Machines
- Some Hosts Are Overloaded with FT Virtual Machines
- Losing Access to FT Metadata Datastore
- Turning On vSphere FT for Powered-On VM Fails
- FT Virtual Machines not Placed or Evacuated by vSphere DRS
- Fault Tolerant Virtual Machine Failovers
- vCenter High Availability
- Plan the vCenter HA Deployment
- Configure the Network
- Configure vCenter HA With the Basic Option
- Configure vCenter HA With the Advanced Option
- Manage the vCenter HA Configuration
- Set Up SNMP Traps
- Set Up Your Environment to Use Custom Certificates
- Manage vCenter HA SSH Keys
- Initiate a vCenter HA Failover
- Edit the vCenter HA Cluster Configuration
- Perform Backup and Restore Operations
- Remove a vCenter HA Configuration
- Reboot All vCenter HA Nodes
- Change the Appliance Environment
- Collecting Support Bundles for a vCenter HA Node
- Troubleshoot Your vCenter HA Environment
- Patching a vCenter High Availability Environment
- Using Microsoft Clustering Service for vCenter Server on Windows High Availability
vCenter High Availability 4
vCenter High Availability (vCenter HA) protects vCenter Server Appliance against host and hardware
failures. The active-passive architecture of the solution can also help you reduce downtime significantly
when you patch vCenter Server Appliance.
After some network configuration, you create a three-node cluster that contains Active, Passive, and
Witness nodes. Different configuration paths are available. What you select depends on your existing
configuration.
1 Plan the vCenter HA Deployment
Before you can configure vCenter HA, you have to consider several factors. A
vCenter Server Appliance deployment can use an internal or external Platform Services Controller.
A brownfield deployment with components that use different versions of vSphere requires different
considerations than a greenfield deployment that includes only vSphere 6.5 components. Resource
and software requirements and the networking setup must also be considered carefully.
2 Configure the Network
Regardless of the deployment option and inventory hierarchy that you select, you have to set up
your network before you can start configuration. To set the foundation for the vCenter HA network,
you add a port group to each ESXi host, and add a virtual NIC to the vCenter Server Appliance that
later becomes the Active node.
3 Configure vCenter HA With the Basic Option
When you use the Basic option, the vCenter HA wizard creates and configures a second network
adapter on the vCenter Server Appliance, clones the Active node, and configures the vCenter HA
network.
4 Configure vCenter HA With the Advanced Option
If you configure the vCenter HA cluster with the Advanced option, you have more control over the
environment, and you do not have to meet some of the prerequisites for the Basic configuration.
However, you are responsible adding a second NIC to the vCenter Server Appliance, cloning the
Active node to the Passive and Witness nodes, and configuring the clones.
5 Manage the vCenter HA Configuration
After you configure your vCenter HA cluster, you can perform management tasks. These tasks
include certificate replacement, replacement of SSH keys, and SNMP setup. You can also edit the
cluster configuration to disable or enable vCenter HA, enter maintenance mode, and remove the
cluster configuration.
VMware, Inc.
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