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Stygre
Contributor
Contributor

Redundant vCenter : Heartbeat vs SRM

Hi Guy's,

I'de like to have a redundant vCenter.

The must is to have VMware Heartbeat licences.

Hoewever, I've only a bundle of SRM licences who are not use Smiley Happy

If I'me not wrong, I can configure SRM to work as VMware Heartbeat ?

Have a nice day.

Thierry

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7 Replies
weinstein5
Immortal
Immortal

With Heartbeat it will be seemless if your primary vCenter were to fail - it is 'instantaneous' and the networking information does not change so sommunictaion is not affected  while SRM there will need to be come some manipulation done after failover - since I am the recovery VM will be in a different location you will have to make sure connectivity is restored to users and the SRAs so SRM is not affected -

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Stygre
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,

I'd like to install to virtualised vCenter in the same range/cluster/location.

In this case, SRM will do same job as Hearbeat (live fail over) ?

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vMario156
Expert
Expert

No Heartbeat and SRM are designed for totally different use cases.

SRM will not failover anything automaticly. There is always a manual input necessary.

Heartbeat provides a HA function to your vCenter Server. If your main Server goes down for any reason the secondary will jump in with out any interrupt.

Regards,

Mario

Blog: http://vKnowledge.net
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Stygre
Contributor
Contributor

Our SRM licenses come from an old dual enclosure architecture.

Whe had two enclosure, two replicated storage bay and two physical vCenter.

If I'm right, in this case SRM make a full rundundant infrastructure.

But I was thinking that the failover was done on live when a fault appeart on the primary infra (non input neded)

I'm wrong ?

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vMario156
Expert
Expert

SRM is a DR software. A failover to a second site is a "huge step" for an VI. Like I said there is nothing done automaticly. Every action needs to be done by the SRM admin.

Regards,

Mario

Blog: http://vKnowledge.net
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Josh26
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Thierry wrote:

Hi,

I'd like to install to virtualised vCenter in the same range/cluster/location.

In this case, SRM will do same job as Hearbeat (live fail over) ?

In the same cluster, this would just be VMware's built in HA.

I never understood much of a need for Hearbeat - in the event of a failure, HA will bring vCenter up in a short moment anyway. Being able to say "instant" is nice, but customers generally care much more for their Exchange, file etc environments than the vCenter only its administrators use.

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eeg3
Commander
Commander

For plain jane environments I agree, but vCenter's availability becomes much more important when using vDS, AutoDeploy, etc.

Blog: http://blog.eeg3.net
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