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FSIIT
Contributor
Contributor

Virtual vCenter on Virtual Distributed Switches

I am intending to deploy VDS but after reviewing vSphere Networking, I realised that Management plane which is based off vCenter server looks to be introducing a "chicken & egg" problem if the vCenter server is virtualized.

So in the event whereby vCenter server is virtualized and outage happen, any idea on the impact of VDS or other production traffic hosted by VDS?

Hopefully i am just thinking too much Smiley Happy and i would appreciate any help. 

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vijayrana968
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

You don't need to worry about vCenter outage (in context of vDS). VDS configuration is synced up in every 5 minutes into file /etc/vmware/dvsdata.db by hostd agent on each ESXI connected to VDS. 

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dbalcaraz
Expert
Expert

As said, you don't need to be worried about a vCenter outage.

Even if the vCenter is off, the Distributed Switch still running on each ESXi host.

So regarding the dVS and the production traffic there will be no impact (obviously you couldn't do network changes when vCenter is powered-off)

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daphnissov
Immortal
Immortal

These are all valid points, however, one last important thing to point out. When you join vCenter to a vDS port group provided by that same vCenter, you need to create a duplicate port group for it set to ephemeral binding mode. The reason being that if vCenter is down and you need to make network modifications, without an ephemeral-bound port group you will be unable to do so which means vCenter won't have network access. This is an often overlooked point so ensure you take care of it.

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