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vspherization
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Considerations on embedded database of Vcenter Virtual Appliance

Hello,

We have deployed a VMware vSphere infrastructure comprising of three ESXi5 host server and one vCenter (we use the prepared VMware vCenter virtual appliance).

We have almost 300 virtual machines, but only a subset is always powered on. Other one are suspended or powered off.

My company expects:

  • max 300 virtual machines (but in the future could be 800)
  • max 30-60 virtual machines powered on (in the future could be 100)
  • the remaining virtual machines powered off or suspended
  • frequent vapp cloning (from 20 to 50 per day)
  • frequent vapp deleting (from 20 to 50 per day)
  • huge use of vmware API to automate operations.

I use the default DB (IBM DB2) available within VMware Vcenter Virtual Appliance. Inventory of vCenter database has been sized according to Small Environment (as VMware says Small inventory is suggested for environment with than 100 hosts or 1000 VMs). RAM reserved is 8GB.

So the first my question is:

Is this database the right one for my company environment or I should change it?

With this environment we have had no issues apart a little issue one week ago.

Few days ago we have experienced some issues with vCenter. The service stopped and the following entry appeared within the log history.

An error occurred and Unable to get exclusive access to vCenter repository.

The crash was frequent.
Googling the error I've solved increasing the values of some variable related to log management of vCenter Database
with this instruction


db2 update db CFG FOR VCDB USING logprimary 16 logsecond 112 logfilsiz 8192

I've read this guide (see FIX TWO) http://blog.allanglesit.com/2012/02/vcenter-vpxd-crash/


The issue has been solved but more than one doubt remains about embedded database and
generally on all the virtual appliance.

So my second question is:

How could I export DB2 database to migrate to another technology (Microsoft or Oracle)
?
Is there any best practice?


Thank you
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