6.5.1
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
- 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
- Index
Manage vCenter HA SSH Keys
vCenter HA uses SSH keys for password-less authentication between the Active, Passive, and Witness
nodes. The authentication is used for heartbeat exchange and le and data replication. To replace the SSH
keys in the nodes of a vCenter HA cluster, you disable the cluster, generate new SSH keys on the Active
node, transfer the keys to the passive node, and enable the cluster.
Procedure
1 Edit the cluster and change the mode to Disabled.
2 Log in to the Active node by using the Virtual Machine Console or SSH.
3 Enable the bash shell.
bash
4 Run the following command to generate new SSH keys on the Active node.
/usr/lib/vmware-vcha/scripts/resetSshKeys.py
5 Use SCP to copy the keys to the Passive node and Witness node.
scp /vcha/.ssh/*
6 Edit the cluster conguration and set the vCenter HA cluster to Enabled.
Initiate a vCenter HA Failover
You can manually initiate a failover and have the Passive node become the Active node.
A vCenter HA cluster supports two types of failover.
Automatic failover
The Passive node aempts to take over the active role in case of an Active
node failure.
Manual failover
The user can force a Passive node to take over the active role by using the
Initiate Failover action.
Initiate a manual failover for troubleshooting and testing.
Procedure
1 Log in to the Active node vCenter Server Appliance with the vSphere Web Client and click .
2 Under select vCenter HA and click Initiate Failover.
3 Click Yes to start the failover.
A dialog oers you the option to force a failover without synchronization. In most cases, performing
synchronization rst is best.
4 After the failover, you can verify that the Passive node has the role of the Active node in the
vSphere Web Client.
Edit the vCenter HA Cluster Configuration
When you edit the vCenter HA cluster conguration, you can disable or enable the cluster, place the cluster
in maintenance mode, or remove the cluster.
The operating mode of a vCenter Server Appliance controls the failover capabilities and state replication in a
vCenter HA cluster.
A vCenter HA cluster can operate in one of the following modes.
vSphere Availability
70 VMware, Inc.