Virtual Centre Server Failure

[chrisb101]

Hello, Yesterday we experienced a Hardware Raid Card failure on one of our Dell servers that runs Virtual Centre. The raid card has been replaced but windows blue screens on boot up, Dell are currently investigating but I though I would ask this question incase we have to rebuild.

How easy or difficult is it to re-install Virtual Centre, we currently have 3 x ESX hosts running can these be imported back into virtual centre etc.

I have a backup of the 2 databases although they are a few weeks old nothing has changed regarding resource pools, users etc

Can VC be re-installed without affecting the running ESX servers? Is there a guide out there to help out with the re-install?

Thanks for your help

Chris

[krowczynski]

Hi,

the most important thing of vcenter is the databse.

But if you have only 3 host just install a new vceneter, it does not take long time.

The best it would be to install it in a vm.

MCP, VCP

[AndreTheGiant]

Can VC be re-installed without affecting the running ESX servers?

Yes

You can recreate the DB, restore the data, and then do a new installation using the existing DB.

Andre

[NTurnbull]

As said above, just restore the database and re-install - if nothing has been added/removed since the last backup then all you'll loose is the performance data since the last backup

Thanks,

Neil

[chrisb101]

That's excellent - thank you everyone. Do you know of any user guides for installed Virtual Centre? I've never done it before

Thanks

[AndreTheGiant · Accepted solution]

Official guide are available at:

http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vs_pages/vsp_pubs_esx40_u1_vc40_u1.html

Andre

[chrisb101]

Thanks for the info, I have re-installed Virtual Centre and configured the license server to use the original license file whcih look to be running well.

As far as next steps, Do I now need to create a Datacentre and import the original 3 ESX servers? Also should I configure vmotion etc first or can that be done after importing the esx servers. Apologies if these are daft questions, I havent done this before and need to make sure I dont break anything on the original ESX servers as they are still running live VM's

Thanks for everyones help

C.