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
5 As part of the clone process, the information about the external Platform Services Controller and the
load balancer is cloned as well.
6 When configuration is complete, the vCenter Server Appliance is protected by vCenter HA.
7 If the Platform Services Controller instance becomes unavailable, the load balancer redirects
requests for authentication or other services to the second Platform Services Controller instance.
Configuration Workflow Overview
You can select a Basic or Advanced configuration option. The Basic option automatically creates the
Passive and Witness nodes as part of vCenter HA configuration. With the Advanced option, you are
responsible for manually cloning the Active node to create the Passive and Witness nodes.
The configuration option that you select depends on your environment. The Basic configuration
requirements are stricter, but more of the configuration is automated. The Advanced configuration is
possible if your environment meets hardware and software requirements, and it offers more flexibility.
However, Advanced configuration requires that you create and configure the clones of the Active node.
Basic Configuration Workflow
Basic configuration automatically clones the Active node. You must meet one of the following
requirements to perform Basic configuration.
n
Either the vCenter Server Appliance that will become the Active node is managing its own ESXi host
and its own virtual machine. This configuration is sometimes called a self-managed vCenter Server.
n
Or the vCenter Server Appliance is managed by another vCenter Server (management
vCenter Server) and both vCenter Server instances are in the same vCenter Single Sign-On domain.
That means they both use an external Platform Services Controller and both are running vSphere 6.5.
If you meet the requirements the Basic workflow is as follows.
1 The user deploys the first vCenter Server Appliance, which will become the Active node.
2 The user adds a second network (port group) for vCenter HA traffic on each ESXi host.
3 The user starts the vCenter HA configuration, selects Basic and supplies the IP addresses, the target
ESXi host or cluster, and the datastore for each clone.
4 The system clones the Active node and creates a Passive node with precisely the same settings,
including the same host name.
5 The system clones the Active node again and creates a more light-weight Witness node.
6 The system sets up the vCenter HA network on which the three nodes communicate, for example, by
exchanging heartbeats and other information.
For step-by-step instructions, see Configure vCenter HA With the Basic Option.
vSphere Availability
VMware, Inc. 74