vCenter 6.5 DR topology

[WM280]

Dear Community

I am looking to upgrade my vCenter 5.5 (Running on Windows Server 2008 R2) to 6.5. I have multiple sites, but currently only a single vCenter server.

I am looking to get some DR capabilities for vCenter.

I have been reading various VMware KB articles with various scenarios, but it requires several VMs per site.

Generally 2 PSCs per site with 1 or 2 vCenter servers.

For my 2 sites, can I install a single PSC in each site and a single vCenter server in each site and achieve DR?

With 2 PSCs in a site, they will replicate information between each other. Not sure if that is possible across sites?

While the PSCs can replicate information, how will vCenter specific data be replicated?

Regards,

[WM280]

Does anyone have any comments or have anyone done such a setup?

The alternative seems to be dual external PCS in each site + single or dual vCenter (6-8 VMs in total), which seems overkill for my environment.

I was hoping to achieve some sort of protection of my vCenter service.

[jhague]

What is your site topology? Do you have stretched clusters across the sites? Or replication? What levels of availability are you trying to achieve? Are you using embedded or external PSC? Are you taking about high availability or disaster recovery as they are very different?

I dont think making the PSC highly available across sites would give you much. The PSC holds licensing information and other bits and pieces but it wont make your vCenter highly available - you need to look at both.

Have you seen this white paper?

https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/techpaper/vmware-vcenter-server-6-...

[WM280]

Hi John

Thank you for commenting.

My current 5.5 environment consists of 3 ESXi hosts in 3 sites (9 hosts alltogether). I have a single vCenter server in SiteA that manages all three sites.

No stretched cluster, no replication. Each site is a separate datacenter with independent VMs, all managed from that single vCenter server.

The vCenter server is a Windows Server 2008 R2 VM.

My VIM_VCDB and VIM_UMDB are running on a separate MS SQL Server. DBs are replicated to SiteB MS SQL server (standby)

With my current setup, vCenter is a single point of failure.

With vCenter 6.5, and specifically the vCSA, there is a new HA feature (looks to only work within a single site), however I am mostly interested in a DR capability.

In the event that; either my vCenter VM dies or Site A is gone, how can I protect my vCenter Server so I can continue to manage my environment in Site B and Site C?

Since SiteB is my DR site, I would ideally like a vCenter Server in that site, as a standby/passive node which can be made active (without much work) in a DR scenario.

From the whitepaper, page 14 "Multisite vCenter Server and PSC Basic Architecture", this seems to provide PSC replication, however what about the vCenter servers?

[jhague]

On page 11 of the link it gives the options for vCenter HA but I don't think any of them apply in your configuration HA, FT, WFCS...

You either need to look at a backup tool or possibly run a cold standby which you can point to your SQL server in the event of a loss or you could look further into this Can I protect my vCenter Server with vSphere Replication?

[WM280]

Hi John

Thanks again for your feedback.

I don't think any of these technologies you mentioned will work in my case. I have actually reviewed these options in the past as well.

As for "Multisite vCenter Server and PSC Basic Architecture" on page 14 of that document, what does that actually give me?

Is it only PSC information that is replicated and the vCenter servers are completely independent, only sharing information provided by the replicated PSC?

I was under the impression that Enhanced Linked Mode would enable replication of vCenter data and not just PSC.

That paragraph states "Enhanced Linked Mode provides for a single point of management for all vCenter Server systems in the same vSphere domain"

[jhague]

On page 14 it states -

The con guration replicates all licenses, global permissions, tags, and roles across all sites.

That is what is replicated. So when you log in you see all your vCenters (or the ones attached to the common SSO domain) and the things above are replicated but the vCenter database isn't so if it fails yo are stuck which is why you need to consider vCenter HA too. Where this mode is useful is if you have a number of vCenters you only need to deploy 1 or 2 PSCs so it can be more efficient as well as the single pane of glass it gives you. But it also takes away some flexibility in the respect that you cant have a mismatch of versions - they all have to be upgraded at the same time.

[WM280]

Thank you John

That is rather frustrating. I guess that means back to the drawing board.

So the little research I did on vCenter 6.5 HA seems to indicate the following

- Only supported with vCSA (the vCenter appliance version) with local database

- Will only work on the same LAN or within the same VMware Datacenter (if that's the right terminology?) Basically with my two geographically separated datacenters (~40ms RTT) with routing/IPSec VPN tunnels between them, I cannot use vCenter HA with one vCSA in SiteA and one vCSA in SiteB?

[jhague]

Pretty much. 10ms is the latency figure I've seen quoted - vCenter Server 6.5 High Availability Performance and Best Practices - VMware VROOM! Blog - VMware Bl...

I'm not sure with the same VMware datacenter is necessarily true - for example if you have 2 sites within the 10ms RTT with stretched layer 2 network I suspect that would be ok but not much use for you unfortunately. I think you are limited to the options I mentioned previously.