Two VC 2.5 in one...

[mister-ginsu]

Hello forum!

My first post as vmware user :smileygrin:

I have 2 ESX 3.5 Farms on two separate sites (siteA and siteB) through one VC 2.5. Another VC 2.5 hosts one ESX 3.5 farm on siteB only.

My question is :

Is it possible to have the VI client pointing to the two VC in the same time?

It's in case of Disaster Recovery Plan. If one site is down, mounting back all vms (ok they are replicated) is a loss of time.

Thanks a lot for your help,

ginsu mister

[dmaster]

Hi mister-ginsu,

welcome to the forum..

you can start two or more virtual center clients at the same time.

one client for one virtual center server.

you can also think about setting up a VirtualCenter 2.5 cluster..

[mister-ginsu]

hello dmaster,

Thanks for your quick answer.

I guess setting up a VC cluster would be the thing. To go further in my idea, it's about the fastest way to recover the VMs in case of DR.

If one site goes down, is it possible to reconnect the whole VI or do we have to manually reconnect each VM from the vmdk file?

Ginsu mister

[weinstein5]

With out any additional tools - you would have to manually add each VM - Take a look at Site Recovery Manager if you want somethig automated -

[dmaster]

Hi mister-ginsu,

in my opinion there are two scenarios you can use.

1) remove the failing esx hosts from virtualcenter, failover your storage and register the vitual machines again on a working esx host.

2) make standby virtual machines available on ESX hosts on the DR site and leave them powered off. in case of disaster power on this standby virtual machines.

make sure this is an extra layer of administartion to contain.

p.s. If you think answers from people on the forum are usefull or correct, please award them with points.

[dmaster · Accepted solution]

Be aware of the following..

Using Site Recovery Manager will result in setting up two different virtualcenter environments.

Until now there is no way to easily failback your environment after all problems are over.

Hopefully Site Recovery Manager 2.0 will support the campus setup. (if you wan't to use your datacenters as a sort of active active cluster).

[mister-ginsu]

Thanks guys,

Now I can work this out and have visibility.

See you soon!!

Ginsu mister