Reboot of Vcentre ESX 4.0

[andrew_mcse]

Hi newbie, who is learning fast

I want to reboot the vcentre server, mainly because it ran out of disk space for it databases (resolved, by modifying the backup job) and also I have a stuck job cancelation in the vsphere client (for patch downlaods whcih had sat there for ages)

Firstly is it OK to reboot the vcentre server as required? Obviously I am not going to be doing it every five minutes, but is it a major no no ? Should I schedule it for when all the VM’s are offline or similar? What’s the overriding impact ?

Now the way this was set up (I did not set it up) is that iso image files are held on a disk mapped to the vcentre server

My experience before was that if I rebooted the vcentre server it took out the first VM that had a mapped image file to its cd rom drive to that disk repository

So is the best way to avoid this just to click disconnect to the CD rom drive on all of the VM’s before I reboot ?

I am just a bit nervous doing this in my production environment, due to my prevous experince of loosing two VM's

Any comments most welcome

[Villag3Idiot · Accepted solution]

Hi mate,

There is minimum impact of rebooting vCenter during production hours, HA will continue to work even if vCenter is not available. You dont need to wait for VMs to be powered off or anything like that. Just do it in a quiet time when you aren't running any vMotions or Storage vMotions and all should be well. I've rebooted our production vCenter server and never run into any problems.

Now the way this was set up (I did not set it up) is that iso image files are held on a disk mapped to the vcentre server

My experience before was that if I rebooted the vcentre server it took out the first VM that had a mapped image file to its cd rom drive to that disk repository

So is the best way to avoid this just to click disconnect to the CD rom drive on all of the VM’s before I reboot ?

Finding it a little hard to picture the set up you describe above, but if you have had problems in the past, i would edit each VMs config and disconnect the CDROM drive before the reboot of vCenter. I'm not sure though why you would need to do this, i've never run into anything like that before...

[andrew_mcse]

Cheers, that's exactly how i thought it should be, but it had not been my experince

I disconnected all the CD rom drives

rebooted vcentre

and all is well

Last time i rbeooted it it took out two VM's inculsing exchnage which was not a happy day, desk phone almost melted

many thanks

Andrew

[Villag3Idiot]

No problem, glad to be of help =D