PSC Failover

[scotvmadmin]

Hi Folks,

We are running 2 vCenters with only 1 External PSC.  If Site A goes down (this is the vCenter where PSC resides) would failing over the PSC to the Secondary site work?  Or do we need a separate PSC for the Secondary Site?  If we require a separate PSC would it work by replicating the PSC data from Site A to this or would it need to be it's only complete entity?  We are running Enhanced Linked Mode with the 2 vCenters.

Many thanks!

[Dan_Johnson]

Hey!

To answer your questions

We are running 2 vCenters with only 1 External PSC.  If Site A goes down (this is the vCenter where PSC resides) would failing over the PSC to the Secondary site work?

Failing over to a PSC in a different SSO site is possible but depends what version of vSphere you're running. vSphere 6.0u1> onwards supports failing to a PSC in a different site, from 6.5 onwards and post 6.0u1 it is not supported... (see below)

https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&docTypeID=DT_KB_1_1&externalId=...

Use cmsso-util repoint to point to the new PSC, then use cmsso-util move-services to move the VC to the other SSO site.

If we require a separate PSC would it work by replicating the PSC data from Site A to this or would it need to be it's only complete entity?  We are running Enhanced Linked Mode with the 2 vCenters

As both vCenters are pointing to the same external PSC and are in linked mode, you have a single vSphere SSO domain.

If you deployed a new PSC in the secondary site as its own entity, it would be a different vsphere SSO domain than the PSC in the first site (even if you gave that vsphere SSO domain the same name as the current vSphere SSO domain), giving you two separate vsphere SSO domains (possibly with the same name, eg vsphere.local)

It is not possible to merge vSphere SSO domains, you also can not re-point a vCenter to a new vSphere SSO domain.

So as your rightly pointed out, your only option is to deploy a new PSC in the secondary site as a replication partner to the current PSC in site A, this will give you two PSCs in the same vSphere SSO domain.

YOU CAN re-point the vCenter to a PSC within the same SSO domain.

My recommendation would be to add the secondary PSC as a replication partner of the PSC in site A, point the vCenter in Site A to the PSC in site A. Then re-point the vCenter in the secondary site and the PSC in the secondary site.

Just to confirm all i've said is correct, see the below 🙂

FAQ: VMware Platform Services Controller in vSphere 6.0 (2113115) | VMware KB