Can the vCenter DB be on a DB server that is a VM?

[mg381]

I've seen some questions about virtualizing the database server that houses the DB for vCenter.

Does anyone have any real world examples of this?

Are there any issues that arise when a snapshot is taken of the DB server, because it pauses things?

What happens when the ESX host the DB server is on goes down? If HA kicks in, will the vCenter automatically pick up the new location of the DB, or do you have to do any restarts of services, or reconfig?

If a virtual DB server is used, should you disable automatic DRS on that too? (you should disable for vCenter server if that is a VM)

Any issues with vMotion of the DB server if it is virtual?

I can't seem to find anything from VMware on this, but I see a lot of discussion in the forums.

I really wish I had a test environment right now...

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

[Troy_Clavell]

we had a discussion about this earlier, maybe it will be useful to you as well?

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/251430

[khughes]

Stop piggy backing off my threads Troy! To answer your question yes it can.

• Kyle

[weinstein5 · Accepted solution]

Does anyone have any real world examples of this?

Yes I have worked with customers who have virtualizaed their DB servers - but being does not stop the requirement to have proper backups taken of the DB since all the VC environment is stored in the DB

Are there any issues that arise when a snapshot is taken of the DB server, because it pauses things?

No issues with taking a snapshot -

What happens when the ESX host the DB server is on goes down? If HA kicks in, will the vCenter automatically pick up the new location of the DB, or do you have to do any restarts of services, or reconfig?

If the ESX host the DB server running goes down will cause VC service to go down - HA will restart the DB server at which point you can restart the VC service-

If a virtual DB server is used, should you disable automatic DRS on that too? (you should disable for vCenter server if that is a VM)

Any issues with vMotion of the DB server if it is virtual?

There should be no problems enabling DRS for DB server (or VC for that matter) since vmotion will work -

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