ESX Cluster with vCenters in both DCs

[JJBN]

Hi,

we are deploying  a new DC and we have the the following scenario:

- Twin DCs working as active/active.

- 1 ESX cluster between DCs

We see that we can only have 1 vCenter. If we have only 1 vCenter in one DC if the DC with the vCenter fails the other DC will stop working. What we would like to have is 2 vCenter in each DC clustered or active/active, so logically there is only 1 vCenter.

How could we have 2 vCenters clustered between DCs, so if One DC fails the other will continue working properly. It is a necessity for us to have a vCenter active in each Data Center for load balancing reasons.

Thank you very much for the help provided.

Regards,

JJBN

[a_p_]

I'm not quite sure I understand your requirements. How does your environment look like? Do you have storage systems on each site with synchronous replication, i.e. wouldn't HA be sufficient to restart the vCenter Server on the other side in case of a disaster? Please provide some more details about the environment to see whether an easy solution (e.g. HA) could be sufficient, or whether you need to look at something like vCenter Heartbeat.

André

[JJBN]

Hi André,

thanks for the reply.

We will be using VPLEX Metro for synchronous replication and we will have storage systems on each site. We will be using vBlock 320 and oracle RAC stretched cluster. Our load balancers (F5 BIG-IP) will be spread in each DC (2 in each DC in active/active mode), will be talking to the vCenter in order to know which VMs are in DC A and which are in DC B, so in case of vMotion they will be aware that a VM has changed of DC and act accordingly. The load Balancers will also load balance the traffic at the multi-tier architecture (web, application and database servers).

If the vCenter is only in one DC, the load balancers in the opposite DC will have to send traffic through the DC inter-link to talk to the vCenter. This is something we want to avoid, if it is possible.

thanks.

Regards,

JJBN

[rh5592]

There is no Active/Active configuration for vCenter Server at the moment. As Andre mentioned, the closest you can have is vCenter Heartbeat, but it is an Active/Passive config. I have implemented heartbeat in a stretched environment (using VPLEX) wherein the primary vCenter is located at Site A and the secondary vCenter is at Site B.