what if vcenter goes down?

[ranjitcool]

While in a meeting, when I was trying to sell the vmware idea, I was tossed a question, what if vcenter goes down.

How do I prevent that? Do I get 2 vms of vcenter too? I plan to have a vm running vcenter. Is that good practise.

God its times like these I wished I could read books faster like a 1965 hollywood robot!!!

Please assist.

Thanks

RJ

May be we all live virtual lives..

[Troy_Clavell · Accepted solution]

If your vCenter instance goes down, your ESX hosts and all their guests will continue to function as normal for 14 days without access to their license source(assuming your vCenter Server is also your license source). HA will work. DRS will not, but that is it.

The most important piece regarding vCenter, in my opinion, is the DB. Take good care of your DB. Ensure it's on a seperate server and running on a clustered solution.

You may want to look at VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat if you are looking into some redundancy for your vCenter instance.

[ranjitcool]

Thanks for the reply Troy.

Would you agree having vcenter as a vm itself is a good practise?

Also when you say the license source, I am sure you are talking about the licensing server for vm. What license do they hold? The vm OS licenses? (this server always confused me if you define it I will catch up from there)

Thanks

RJ

May be we all live virtual lives..

[Troy_Clavell]

Would you agree having vcenter as a vm itself is a good practice?

We have multiple instance of vCenter, some are running as VM's some are running on physical hardware. Running VirtualCenter in a Virtual Machine is fully supported.

Also when you say the license source, I am sure you are talking about the licensing server for vm. What license do they hold? The vm OS licenses? (this server always confused me if you define it I will catch up from there)

what version of vCenter are you running? VI3 works with a license server, usually installed on your vCenter Host Server. vSphere is licensed with keys, but the keys still hold feature of your ESX Hosts and vCenter instance.

[ranjitcool]

I have the vi3 running right now.

It never really complained about the license server only asks me to enter the product key coz Its still in evaluation mode.

RJ

May be we all live virtual lives..

[Troy_Clavell]

eventually the evaluation will run out, and if you want to continue to use the product and it's features you will need production licenses.

Typically if you have a vCenter Server, it's also your license server. All license files are centralized and handled by your license server.

[ranjitcool]

One last follow up q is they (vi3 and vi4) are free, so where do I get the license key from?

RJ

May be we all live virtual lives..

[Troy_Clavell]

http://www.vmware.com/download/esxi/

when you register, you will be emailed a license key, that key needs to be installed into your ESXi Server by going Configuration--Licensed Features

!

[ranjitcool]

I always thought so.

Thanks Troy, now if I may have your address a 24pack budlight is on its way!

RJ

May be we all live virtual lives..

[mreferre]

What I usually say is that it depends and that things need to be put into context.

For a small setup (i.e. 2 or 3 physical hosts) would be ridiculous to add a 3rd or a 4th physical server for vCenter. Plus consider that a single physical server is a single point of failure so (paradox) you might be more safe / reliable with vCenter as a VM.

On the other hand if you have a big farm of dozens of physical VMware hosts having a couple of additional low-end physical servers for a clusterized vCenter might be an option.

BTW while I am a big fun of vCenter as a VM there might be situations where this could be an "obstacle". for example I have a small vSphere cluster comprised of 2 blades where I have vCenter as a VM and I noticed I couldn't change the the EVC (Enhanced VMotion Compatibility) setting easily because it was required that all VMs were down to do that and I couldn't obviously shutdown the vCenter VM at that point. I was in a hurry and perhaps I have overlooked something but it's just to say that there is a point in having vCenter as an external entity ..... the point is .... is it really worth in the end?

Massimo.

[ranjitcool]

Thanks for the points King, I really liked yoru heads up on the case where you had to take down all the vms. I think I would start off with a physical vcenter to begin with, although right now 1 and in future 2 or more esx hosts, and eventually might move it to a vm.

Thanks

RJ

May be we all live virtual lives..

[azn2kew]

For redunancy, once you've configured your physical vCenter server, then schedule to run P2V of the physical vCenter server so that you have a backup vCenter server in a VM, if physical is dead, just power on the VM server. that's another option you can try.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

VMware vExpert 2009

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant