Best practice to restart a cluster with AD & VC in VM.

[zemotard]

Hi, I own a Vmware cluster with 2 ESX 3.5

I need some advices concerning the best practice to restart this cluster after a maintenance

in my datacenter.

My AD servers are in 2 VM (one of each ESX)

My VC (with License) is also in a VM

All vm & ESX will be stop.

Hi already have some troubles to restart my cluster: VM was very long to start. The progress

bar stops at 85%.

I don't know what the esx checks at the startup but what's the behavior if the cluster is

not able to find VC & License server (because the VM is not started in my case)

SO what do you advise me to start properly the clusteR ?

Thanks.

[bulletprooffool]

It is always advisable to know EXACTLY where your VC and Database are (along with the license server)

I have always thought that if you want your VC on a VM, it is best to set rules to make sure that the DB and the VC stay on a specific host (except in the case of hardware failure)

That way you can connect to the ESX host with these VMs, start the DB VM and then start the VC, before continuing with all your other VMs.

If your AD is all hosted on VMs, then I would start in the following sequence:

Domain Controller

Database Server

Virtual Centre

[zemotard]

Thanks for your usefull feedback, but I already have a trouble when I restarted my cluster, some vm was very long to start, i don't know why.

Is it necessary to have the licence server reachable before to restart the cluster ?

Thanks

[Troy_Clavell]

the license server can be down for 14 days and still everything will function just fine. How many VM's were coming up at once, are they on local or shared disk? If you want to set a startup priority you can.

[krowczynski]

If your vms need a long time to come up (booting), it seems that you have a problem with the underlying storage.

[Tanav]

hi,

you can unregister and re-register the machine (it will create new configuration file). some time we have issue with VMX file also. if still not solve then please check the storage with vendor for performance issue.

thanks

Tanav

[Tanav]

hi,

you can unregister and re-register the machine (it will create new configuration file). some time we have issue with VMX file also. if still not solve then please check the storage with vendor for performance issue.

thanks

Tanav

[Tanav]

hi,

you can unregister and re-register the machine (it will create new configuration file). some time we have issue with VMX file also. if still not solve then please check the storage with vendor for performance issue.

thanks

Tanav

[Tanav]

hi,

you can unregister and re-register the machine (it will create new configuration file). some time we have issue with VMX file also. if still not solve then please check the storage with vendor for performance issue.

thanks

Tanav

[zemotard]

Thanks to all for your answer.

Regards