Heartbeat server rename

[jakas]

Why does the installation requres a server name change? what if we do not change the name of the servers?

Couldnt find any discussion on this, appologies if this is a repeate question. thanks.

[dmihaescu]

You need this so that both servers can be accesed to allow them to receive OS updates, virus definition updates, etc.

[chrisoxy]

This makes no sense. Why do we have to change the name of the server? We have standardized server names (site code, location, etc). We can't just name a machine "vcenterprimary." What if in the part where you put in the new name you just put the original server name? What would happen?

[AltonYu]

You would still be accessing the vCenter Server from the old name. You're just renaming the host so that you can distinguish the primary from the secondary server. Can you perhaps give it the name-p for primary and -s for secondary? vCenter should be configured the way you want it before installing Heartbeat and then you rename the host with the Heartbeat install (or after).

[chrisoxy]

I'm not sure I follow. Let's say the fqdn server name is "xyz.domain.com" and the alias is vcenter.domain.com. When I install heartbeat, I have to change "xyz.domain.com" to "vcenterprimary.domain.com" while vcenter.domain.com is still pointing to the original IP. I'm not sure how that is using the old name. Why wouldn't heartbeat just know that whatever server I tell it is primary is primary (in this case xyz.domain.com)? I've never seen an app that requires you change the entire name of the server just to install. Am I missing something?

[AltonYu]

Well, when you're using non-identical nodes, which is the case of vCSHB since version 6.4, you need to somehow identify which host is which (primary or secondary).

So, what you would have might be:

Primary server:

hostname: xyz.domain.com

service name (what your users will use to access the host): vcenter.domain.com

Secondary server:

hostname: xyz2.domain.com

service name: vcenter.domain.com

You'll have vcenter.domain.com in DNS as the public IP or virtual IP and xyz and xyz2 will have their own unique IPs on the same interface. You'll probably have another interface for the channel IPs. (You could put them on the same NIC, but it would mean that you would have a single point of failure).

Does this help?