Can anyone point me to the definitive list of tasks which can and can’t be performed when vCenter is unavailable?
I already know a fair few but I’ve spend ages searching the web some an official VMware KB on this with no success.
I don't know that there is a list of what can't be performed. What is it that you need to do? I assume you will be recovering vCenter.
You will only lose a single point of administration for all your ESX(i) Hosts. DRS/vMotion will not work, but HA will continue to function.
I'm trying to document this list to provide our virtualisation administrators.
As part of a redundancy guide it's handy to understand the impact of vCenter being down.
VMware used to include this within their earlier documentation but it seems to have vanished over the years. Maybe because VMware don't like the idea of showing thier weaknesses?
This is a bit older, but you'll get a general idea
http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2008/08/05/what-if-my-virtualcenter-server-crashes/
Thanks, this is helpful but I wonder where Duncan created his list from.
Maybe I'll ask him.
Also worth considering other services that depend on vcenter - I understand if you use Xen Desktop , it gets very upset if it can't talk to vcenter on a regular basis.
I have never seen a "what if" document from VMware surrounding the loss of vCenter. There are ways to help protect it, and the most important would be to keep your DB remote. In the event of a vCenter loss, you could build new and have your environment back on-line very quickly.
I think it is more important to understand how it will impact you and what you will do in the event vCenter does go down. If your organization has three hosts and don't make use of DRS, don't have many new VMs being created, etc. then it will be a little different that if you have hundreds of hosts and a highly active environment with test/dev.
Wont vCenter loose perf counters, or will they cache on the hosts for a bit then reuplad to vCenter when its back online?
And VDR jobs will all fail correct?