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
8 Review the information for the Passive and Witness nodes, click Edit to make changes, and click
Next.
If you are not using a DRS cluster, select different hosts and datastores for the Passive and Witness
nodes if possible.
9 Click Finish.
The Passive and Witness nodes are created. When vCenter HA configuration is complete,
vCenter Server Appliance has high availability protection.
What to do next
See Manage the vCenter HA Configuration for a list of cluster management tasks.
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.
Procedure
1 Create and Configure a Second NIC on the vCenter Server Appliance
Before you can start the Advanced configuration, you have to create and configure a second NIC on
the vCenter Server Appliance that will become the active node. This NIC will be used for vCenter HA
traffic. You perform this task after you set up the network, but before you start the configuration
process.
2 Start the Advanced Configuration Process
After you configure the network and you add a second NIC to the vCenter Server Appliance, you can
start the vCenter HA configuration process.
3 Create and Configure the Clones of the Active Node
As part of the Advanced configuration, you have to clone the Active node to create the Passive and
Witness nodes. Do not exit the Configure vCenter HA wizard while you perform the cloning tasks.
4 Complete the vCenter HA Advanced Configuration
After you create the Passive and Witness nodes, return to the configuration wizard on the Active
node to complete the configuration.
Create and Configure a Second NIC on the
vCenter Server Appliance
Before you can start the Advanced configuration, you have to create and configure a second NIC on the
vCenter Server Appliance that will become the active node. This NIC will be used for vCenter HA traffic.
You perform this task after you set up the network, but before you start the configuration process.
vSphere Availability
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