VMware Communities : All Content - VMware vCenter™ Server Heartbeat™

Server Heartbeat and Windows 2008 64-BIT

yvan_comte — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 09:44:24 GMT

Hi Justin

sorry to bother you again, I haven't seen any update on HB 5.5 u2 on the vmware site. Any status about the availability of the product that will support x64 and win 2008?

thanks

yvan

Upgrading HB 5.5 U1 to U2

justinking — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:20:38 GMT

There are are two KBs available that describe the update for Heartbeat and the update of vCenter when protected by Heartbeat.

KB 1010474 Upgrading vCenter Server Heartbeat 5.5 to vCenter Server Heartbeat 5.5 Update 1
same process for Update 2

KB 1010479 Upgrading to vCenter Server 4.0 when using vCenter Server Heartbeat to only protect vCenter Server

Justin King
Product Specialist - VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat

http://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-server-heartbeat/

VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat 5.5 Update 2 Release

justinking — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:34:15 GMT

Available for download this evening!!

h1. VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat 5.5 Update 2 Release Notes

VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat 5.5 Update 2| XX OCTOBER 2009| Build 3117

Last Document Update: XX OCTOBER 2009

Check frequently for additions and updates to these release notes.

This release of VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat provides protection for the following products:

vCenter Server 2.5
vCenter Server 2.5 Update 1
vCenter Server 2.5 Update 2
vCenter Server 2.5 Update 3
vCenter Server 2.5 Update 4
vCenter Server 2.5 Update 5
vCenter Server 4.0
vCenter Server 4.0 Update 1

These release notes include the following topics:

What's New

Learning about vCenter Server Heartbeat

Prior Releases of vCenter Server Heartbeat

Before You Begin

Known Issues

Resolved Issues

What's New

The following information provides highlights of some of the enhancements available in this release of vCenter Server Heartbeat 5.5 Update 2.

*
Note: The features available depend on the version of vCenter Server installed.

*

Features*

Support for Windows Server 2008 SP1 and SP2 (x86/x64) â€" VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat now supports running on Windows Server 2008 SP1 and SP2 (including x86 and x64 versions) operating systems.

**
Support for Windows Server 2003 Enterprise SP2 (x64) â€" VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat now supports running on the Windows Server 2003 Enterprise SP2 (x64) operating system.

**
Protection of VMware vCenter Management Web Services â€" This release of VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat adds the vCenter Management Web Server to its list of protected vCenter Server components.

**
Introduction of the WinZip Self-Extracting executable file for Setup â€" Installation and setup of VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat is initiated through the use of a WinZip Self-Extracting executable file.

**
60-day evaluation mode â€" This release of VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat provides a built-in 60-day evaluation mode that is triggered from the date of installation. Either prior to or upon expiration of the 60-day evaluation period, administrators will need to provide a valid license key to continue to leverage VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat functionality.

**
Tomcat Monitoring Rule â€" A new rule has been added for vCenter 4.0 Tomcat Web Server availability.

**
Note: The term vSphere Client is applicable to both vSphere Client and VI Client except where VI Client is specifically stated.

*

Justin King
Product Specialist - VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat

http://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-server-heartbeat/

Latest Version of Heartbeat

jkasal — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:12:32 GMT

Very nice. I can now proceed with plans for a Windows 2008 Ent 64bit vCenter server.

Thanks justinking

jkasal

what will be replicated from the 2nd server to the primary one..

justinking — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:47:42 GMT

the heartbeat application will maintain the application data, configuration etc between both nodes, anything outside of this (OS patches, CA agent etc) will need to be manually done on both servers. The solution only mirrors the application not the entire server.

hope that helps

Justin King
Product Specialist - VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat

http://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-server-heartbeat/

configuring heartbeat in a p2p enviornment

justinking — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:05:17 GMT

The documented process for installing a P2P is to have a second server installed with matching OS, drive letters and second network card. The server will have a temporary name within a workgroup and a temporary static IP address. The installer will then clone the production server and lay this over the temporary secondary server to create the physical clone.

If the secondary server is part of the domain you will end up with stale domain records for objects that no longer exists.

Justin King
Product Specialist - VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat

http://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-server-heartbeat/

Experiences conversion program Neverfail Hearthbeat to VMware vCenter Hearthbeat

RobMokkink — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:38:29 GMT

It's now the 2nd of november but still no new licenses.

Anyone else haveing the same expierence with the conversion program?

Difference between vCenter Linked Mode and vCenter Heartbeat

AdrianoOliveira — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 01:04:34 GMT

justinking Thank you very much for your help.B-)

Composer Service

justinking — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:34:15 GMT

arjanhs, sorry for the delay, if the composer component is installed prior to the heartbeat installation then this will automatically be included when cloned and protected by heartbeat to insure uptime. If you decide to add view composer to a vCenter server protected with heartbeat we are arranging a KB to assist, but this isn't public as of yet. I would be willing to assist via email if necessary if this is the case.

Justin King
Product Specialist - VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat

http://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-server-heartbeat/

Info database

justinking — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 17:42:52 GMT

Frauno, yes vCenter Server Heartbeat provides protection of SQL server databases stored on storage area networks. SAN mount to the server as locally attached and this is all we need to see, the good thing is the second server can be SAN, NAS or direct attached, they do not need to match up or be identical, just as long as the presented drive mappings are the same on both sides, the storage technologies can be different.

Justin King
Product Specialist - VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat

http://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-server-heartbeat/

heartbeat over WAN - how to setup the remote servers?

justinking — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 17:51:57 GMT

Raj, the heartbeat product has built in technology to keep the correct IP configured in VPXA. When a failover or swithover occurs, Heartbeat will 1, update the DNS hostname with the correct IP to maintain user and application connectivity and 2, update the VPXA of each connected host with the new IP address of vCenter so the hosts remain connected.

Additional info on a WAN configuration is you will need the channel subnet to be able to comunicate with the secondary site channel subnet (network routing) and recommended 1mb of available bandwidth, however compression can be enbled if less is present.

Justin King
Product Specialist - VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat

http://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-server-heartbeat/

vCS Heartbeat supports VMware vCenter Server 2.5 Update 5

RobMokkink — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:47:26 GMT

Were can i find the upgrade documentation?

There were some steps needed when you needed to upgrade vCenter. I can't find these anymore on the neverfail extranet site.

How many of What Part is Needed

dougm — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:00:07 GMT

Found the answer, it was in the "plugins" section. The username and password provided at initial configuration did not get passed through to the Plugin section for the VirtualCenterNFPplugin.dll. As soon as you edit the plugin and provide valid credentials, the error will go away.

I found this on two installations.

Heartbeat over WAN connection

justinking — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 17:13:40 GMT

Rajhyd, the entire vCenter databases are replicated via byte level replication. First there is a sync / verify process to sync up the data and then as changes happen the disk writes are sent over to the second server maintaining a consistant state. This technology is fully support by the Microsfot SQL Server team.

Justin King
Product Specialist - VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat

http://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-server-heartbeat/

Contest: Share Your vSphere Upgrade Success Story

KarriC — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 22:32:34 GMT

Tell us your upgrade story for a chance to win a MacBook Air or an iPod Touch.

Has upgrading to VMware vSphere already delivered a noticeable impact on your IT environment? Are you able to quantify the results and share them with us?
Tell us your upgrade story for a chance to win an Apple MacBook Air laptop (bundled with VMware Fusion) or an Apple iPod Touch.
Read the Contest Rules for more details.

Submit your story by 17 August, 2009 to enter.

Success Story Guidelines and Criteria

Tell us how VMware vSphere has solved specific IT issues (business continuity and disaster recovery, desktop management, IT Service Delivery etc).
In your responses, be sure to include information about:

Business and technical problem(s) you solved (pain points, uniqueness of problem).
VMware vSphere features/technologies you used to solve the problem(s).
Size and scope of your VMware Infrastructure 3 and vSphere deployments.
Benefits of using VMware to solve a problem (ROI, TCO, other quantifiable business results).

Responses will be judged based on your ability to demonstrate:

An understanding about the general benefits of using virtualization, as well as the features and benefits of VMware vSphere.
The specific advantages of using VMware vSphere to solve your particular business and/or technical challenge(s).
Quantifiable results and/or other metrics you have gathered.
Creativity! You are encouraged to include videos, diagrams and other media uploads in your response.

vCenter Heartbeat Memory Pages / Sec value Exceeded

justinking — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:45:12 GMT

Jkasal, the parameters defined for operat system performance are by default, typical Microsoft recommendations and may need to be adjusted so a baseline can be set for setting into action. Also this alarm will not clear itself once the values return to normal so it maybe just a case of a spike at startup or similar causing this as you state it is an empty environment.

I would suggest monitoring the value with perfmon and adjust the value as necessary.

Justin King
Product Specialist - VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat

http://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-server-heartbeat/

Heartbeat evaluation

Troy Clavell — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:18:08 GMT

Thank you for the clarification on this Justin, I simply missed the obvious. I agree, if the product was driven by VMware's Customer base than the importance and the necessity is worth the effort to develop such a product. As a VMware customer, we have put in many feature requests surrounding the product suite VMware offers.

For us, VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat just doesn't make sense. If your database is intact and well protected and with the ability to run vCenter as a VM, you can have an instance back up and production ready in less than an hour. Yes, it will affect some products and features you mentioned but for a very short period of time, but will it affect production? I guess that is a question each company has to answer. For us, supporting a clinical environment, we feel the outage of vCenter for a short period of time would not affect patient care or any other production systems.

Our company is a full VMware shop and I believe in VMware and their products. What works for one company may not work for another.

vSphere and vCenter Server Heartbeat

RobMokkink — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:38:14 GMT

We install SQL locallly, our vCenter server has enough horse power to do that.

We have never experienced any performance problems what so ever.

virtual machine heartbeat delay

MickMcLovin — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 13:55:13 GMT

I have a cluster of 14 hosts with 150+ VMs. The VC is 2.5 U2 and the hosts 3.5 U2. I have enabled an alarm to alert when a VM heartbeat is lost. The problem being is that if the VM is under load it may occassionally lose heartbeats and trigger the alarm. If I edit the file /etc/vmware/hostd/config.xml and set the heartbeatDelayInSecs tag under vmsvc to 0 seconds as below:
<vmsvc>
<heartbeatDelayInSecs>#</heartbeatDelayInSecs>
<enabled>true</enabled>
</vmsvc>

Will this delay the heartbeat alarm triggers?

Also VM monitoring is not enabled at the cluster level.

New Stuff Added to vSphere Upgrade Center

KarriC — Thu, 21 May 2009 06:16:42 GMT

With vSphere now in GA, we've added a bunch of stuff to the Upgrade Center:

Coming later this month: The Path to vSphere Unleashed -- A detailed guide on how to complete the transition from VI3 to vSphere 4.

Hands-on Training Courses for VMware vSphere

KarriC — Thu, 21 May 2009 06:09:18 GMT

Be among the first to get training on the industry's first cloud operating system. If you're upgrading from VMware Infrastructure 3, VMware vSphere: What's New covers new features and how to perform the upgrade. If VMware vSphere is your first virtualization experience, VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage covers all the skills you need to get started.
Feedback from students who've attended our instructor-led courses:

"The best training course I've ever taken from an instructor led standpoint. The most focused, and well formatted training. Instructor was best I've ever had in any course (about 40 courses to date) stayed on track, while answering misc. questions asked from the Class. I will be recommending this course to all co-workers, and because of this course, have to decided that there is a place for this product in our environment."

"This was my first online technical class, and I found the format and content far better than any other technical training class I've taken. The lab setup, course materials, and instructors are all top notch."

"After several VMware seminars, webinars and discussions with colleagues that have worked with VMware, this course finally revealed the magic behind the curtains. My mind is overflowing with creative designs and uses of VMware in our current environment. I look forward to implementing VMware in our environment and promoting this technology across other sister companies within our corporation. The course gave me enough information to help design our VMware infrastructure, plan for implementation and coordinate post implementation tasks and clean-up. Keep up the great work!"

VMware vSphere 4.0 is HERE and Generally Available - we're not just taking sales orders!

Badsah — Thu, 21 May 2009 05:47:09 GMT

As many of you already suspected, VMware vSphere 4 GA has been released tonight. You can now download and evaluate the product for free, for 60 days, and purchase it through the VMware Store. For all your vSphere needs, visit the VMware vSphere Community - your VMware vSphere headquarters!

VMware vSphere Community

Thanks, Badsah

VMware vSphere Upgrade Center now live!

John_PA — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 05:09:53 GMT

The VMware vSphere upgrade center went live tonight along with the launch of VMware vSphere on the vmware.com website. The VMware vSphere upgrade center was designed to help VMware Infrastructure customers plan for a smooth migration to VMware vSphere.

Upgrade Center features:
Understanding VMware vSphere licensing
What's new with VMware vSphere
Plus lots of great migration videos and technical resources.

Be the first to check it out! We hope you enjoy the upgrade center.

VMware vSphere 4.0 is coming soon!

Badsah — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 21:45:45 GMT

Check back here or subscribe to the RSS feed to get updates on the upcoming product launch.

The VMware Team