where and how many Vcenter must be installed ? as a VM or as phisical host? - config is 2xESXi40 - 1xEMC2 CX4-120 - DAS mode

[atravesde]

"BEST PRACTICE RECOMENDATION"

I have working with 1 ESXi40 in DAS mode very good and everything goes very good.

I still have some aditional phisical production servers to be virtualized, but before doing that

we are growing our virtual infrastucture by adding a second Esxi40, and installing Virtual Center software and license to use HA, Vmotion, etc.

the thing and questions is, if i am migrating all my phisical hosts to a VMs, Do i need a new phisical server to install Virtual Center, yes or not.

and why?

if not, can the Vcenter be virtualized, and what is the best practice to do this.

wich of the following configuration could be valid, best recomendation and why, and why not.

a) create 1 Vcenter VM, located in a datastore that comes from local hard disk that comes from one Esxi40 host

b) create 1 Vcenter VM, located in a datastore that comes from the CX4-120, and the storage group created contains 1 ESXi40 phisical host

c) create 1 Vcenter VM, located in a datastore that comes from the CX4-120, and the storage group created contains 2 ESXi40 phisical hosts

d) create 2 Vcenter VW, located in a datastore that comes from the CX4-120, and the storage group created contains 1 ESXi40 phisical host

c) create 2 Vcenter VM, located in a datastore that comes from the CX4-120, ahd the storage group created containds 2 ESXi40 phisical hosts

thank you

Mc.

[golddiggie · Accepted solution]

You're over-complicating things...

Make the vCenter as a VM, giving it the requirements for processors, RAM, etc... Place it on a datastore available to BOTH hosts. In fact, I would make sure that ALL the LUN's where any VM's sit are available to BOTH ESXi host servers.

I would also recommend using a full SQL Server for the db, not using SQL Express. If you have a SQL 2005 server, use that. If you want to future proof things, put vCenter onto a 64 bit OS (so you're ready for vCenter 4.1 and ESXi 4.1). Having the SQL database on an actual SQL server (different VM/server than the vCenter server) makes things much easier down the road...

VMware VCP4

Consider awarding points for "helpful" and/or "correct" answers.

[jkumhar75]

Hi,

As per the above mentioned option from you. It seems the option of installing the 1 virtual center on the VM and put the virtual disk on the datastore which is connected and shared on both the ESXi server.

If you found this or other information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful".

Jayprakash VCP3,VCP4,MCSE 2003

[atravesde]

Thank you,

is there any thing that i need to configure in order to protect the VM, where virtual center is installed,

what happend if this VM crash, how to recover my vcenter server. Any service of vmware that can be

applied on this vm, failover, snapshot,, etc.

what else can you recomend to be protected.

MC.

[jkumhar75]

Hi,

You form a Vmware cluster and join this two VMware ESX host into the cluster and then enable the HA nd DRS features for the maximum availabilty and performance.If the ESX host on which virtual center VM is running will encounter any issues and it fails then the VC VM will fail-back to another ESX server and online without any issues.

If you found this or other information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful".

Jayprakash VCP3,VCP4,MCSE 2003

[atravesde]

just one question

suppose that the VC VM, is working over the esxi1, with HA and DRS enabled,

and the there is power crash on this esx1,

does this service automatically starts the VC vm on the other esx2, yes or not.

thank you

mc

[jkumhar75]

Hi,

Yes, it will automatically vmotion the server to other working ESX in the case of power failure,Network Loss or any hardware faults occured in the source ESX server.

If you found this or other information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful".

Jayprakash VCP3,VCP4,MCSE 2003

[atravesde]

Thank you jkumhar75

MC

[rickardnobel]

Yes, it will automatically vmotion the server to other working ESX in the case of power failure,Network Loss or any hardware faults

>occured in the source ESX server.

But I do not think vMotion will be used?

If there is any hardware issue or power failure on that host all VMs will crash hard and then just restarted on the other host, hopefully without the guest OS not being damaged by the crash. If there is a network loss there could be configured if the VMs should be graceful shuted down or just powered off, before they can be restarted on the other host.