vCentre Server unable to see ESXi Hosts if DNS Fails

[stickyfingers85]

Hello

We performed a DR test at the weekend which involved shutting down our entire Infrastructure.

Upon  trying starting everything back up again we noticed that our DNS had  failed to start.  The DNS is on our main DC servers, and is not  virtualized.

When we then used vSphere to connect to the vCentre  server we could see the inventory with all our ESXi Hosts and VM's, but  they were all coming up as disconnected.

After much playing  around we eventually just added all our 11 ESXi's into the vCentre  Servers Host file.  We could then communicate with each ESXi and  everything was fine.

Eventually we brought the DNS back online and so its resolved.

What  i need to find out is if there is a way to keep the vCentre server  connected to all the ESXi Hosts even when DNS fails?  Without having to  edit the host file.

Thanks in advance

Andrew

[firestartah]

Hi

You can specify the ip address of the vCentre server under administration>vcentre settings>runtime setting>managed ip address. I would also recommend creating a secondary DNS server as having a single DNS server is taking a massive chance that if that server crashes or doesn't come up after a failure like it did then you will have major problems in your infrastructure.

I would also recommend making this secondary one a virtual machine and making the settings in the HA settings for the machine set to high priority for restart in the case of an HA error on the host the DNS server is hosted on.

Gregg

[stickyfingers85]

Thanks for the advice

We currently have 3 DC servers, each is a DNS.

When the DNS failed on the first 1st DC, vcentre server didn't go to either of the other 2 DNS servers.

FOr the DR shutdown we deactivated HA, and were then going to reactive it upon everything starting up again but couldn't because vcentre server couldn't see the Hosts

Not quite sure what you mean by adding the IP address of the vcentre server into the settings?  Do you mean add in the IP address of each ESXi host into the vcentre, or have i missunderstood?

THanks