What if SQL server for VC goes offline?

[gotwings]

I havent necessarily ever test this over a prolonged period of time (thankfully). If your SQL server blows up and is down for a couple days you would lose

1. Your historical metrics on server performance

2. HA?

3. DRS?

4. Vmotion?

5. Any other functionality?

My SQL servers have always been highly available so I cant turn one off and sit back. Has anyone tested all this functionality, one by one??

[Dave_Mishchenko]

You also loose the ability to start the VI client connected to VirtualCenter. So without the database you can only use the VI client to connect to your ESX hosts directly. I'd assume the same for the web interface.

[mittim12]

Without VirtualCenter you lose the ability to configure HA but if already configured then it should still continue to function independently of VirtualCenter

Edited to add templates to the list of funtionality you are missing with no virtual center.

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Message was edited by: mittim12

[weinstein5]

VC will stop and as the other two poster pointed our you stop collecting performance data and vmotion stops working which means drs stops working - HA can still funtion because the functionality gets pushed down to the ESX host - you will not be able to configure or manage HA though -

[gotwings]

If Vmotion stops working, dosent that mean that HA would stop working as well?

Or are you saying admin directed vmotion isnt available but the automated HA fucntions still run independantly.

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Vmotion is different from HA. With Vmotion the VM is still running and VC oversees the live migration from one host to another. With HA, the host running the VM has failed in some manner and thus one of the other ESX hosts in the cluster will restart it (depending of course on the rules you have set). Once you have configured HA, is it able to run without the VC server being online.

DRS on the other hand is using Vmotion and thus would need the VC server to be online.

[mittim12]

VMotion and HA are different in a sense that VMotion is a mechanism used to transfer a guest server to a different physical host without any downtime. HA is used to bring up guest servers on a different host when the original host experiences a failure. There is no way to avoid downtime when HA becomes involved because it's unplanned. The server shuts down for whatever reason and the VM is restarted on another node in the cluster.

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