vCenter Database availability

[VMMikeC]

Hi,

I'm creating a separate instance of vCenter to support my View environment. We will use SQL Server 2008 for the vcenter database. The SQL Server we will use for the View vCenter server will not be clustered. What kind of implications will that have when say MS Updates need to be installed on the SQL Server and the server needs to be restarted?  I will ask my DBA team to only restart this server during the night when needed.

Thanks,

Mike

[idle-jam]

during the downtime of vcenter, there is no performance monitoring. no vmotion and drs being available. however your vmware hosts and virtual machines will be running as normal. for my advise it would just let it reboot during low peak period or during weekends where the lost of performance stats and drs is not much of an impact.

[VMMikeC]

idle-jam, thank you for your reply. Just to clarify, in case it would bring a different answer. I wasn't referring to the vcenter server being restarted, I was referring to the database server that holds my vcenter database being restarted.

thx

[idle-jam · Accepted solution]

sorry i've assume that the vcenter and the database are the same server. like wise it's the same. but the it's better to stop the vcenter before reboot the db server so that vcenter would not try to do something funny when the DB is not available.

[VMMikeC]

thank you much

[Troy_Clavell]

for planned maintenance I also turn DRS to the most conservative.  This helps prevent a bunch of DRS events kicking off when vCenter comes online a little quicker than the vpx agents on the ESX(i) Hosts.

Also, if you use the "Host connection state alarm" with and action to send email, you may disable that alarm to during maintenance.

[DyJohnnY]

If you are using a dVS, like the nexus 1000V (may apply to vmware DVS) - you will not be able to make changes to the VMs networking settings, if they are on a distributed switch. The DVS's are very dependant on vCenter Services being operational.

Stick to what people above said, stop vcenter service before you put DB down for maintenance. it is a best practice, not only for vCenter, but for any app that has "frontend"+"database backend".