Breaking vCenter HA, will the active reboot?

[jeffj2000]

We had two VCSA v6.5U1 in HA mode. For some reason the root password change did not sync between the Witness and the Passive appliances. We think because we changed the password expiration after we change the root password from the Active node.

So on one cluster the Passive node was running as the Active node for probably months. Most likely after we patched and forgot to fail back. So VMware support had us do a destrocy-vcha on the Passive node to convert to stand alone. It rebooted and all is well.

The 2nd VCSA is in the same situation, except this time the Active node is running on the actually Active VM. But we still cannot use the root password to login to the Witness and the Passive nodes. Again we suspect becasue we changed the expiration from 365 days to 90 days a couple of times back and forth.

One thing I may do is boot single user to the Witness and Passive and reset the password.

However we actually just want to break HA.

Will we need all 3 appliances to have the same Root password before we break it from the GUI?

Also does breaking it from the GUI also restart all the services like destroy-vcha did? I need to let people know.

Thank you very much. It was such an odd sitation happens to 2 vCenters.

[birend1988]

Even breaking the VCHA from GUI execute the destroy-vcha command in background. So yes, it will restart the services.

[jeffj2000]

But it is a safe operation right? I am able to get a VAMI backup daily, so I think the active node is all good and such. Is it safer to break from command line then?

I was planning to break from the GUI and not delete the VMs option, so worse case I may have a good passive node to try to recover if need be. Thank you.

[birend1988]

Yes, you can go with command line option.

[shaveen007]

Hello guys,]

So if my passive node is current the active one, destroying the vcha via the gui will make it the new active node?

[Ajay1988]

Yes. you r correct

[shaveen007]

Hello Ajay

Thanks for you quick response 

I just want to be sure.

There is an option to delete passive and witness node. If I select it, what happen?

Does it convert the passive node(active role) to active and then delete the current active and witness node?

[Ajay1988]

Under vCHA option itself you can check which one is active and passive. It will delete the current passive and witness nodes.