Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of jskfan
jskfanFlag for Cyprus

asked on

Vcenter High Availability.

I wonder if there is a way to make Vcenter available all the time when Vcenter is a VM not physical machine.

let's say our vsphere client connect to Vcenter(VM) and for some reason the Vcenter has problems,
I now we can connect to ESXi through the client, but we may need to connect VCenter.

any help will be very much appreciated.

Thanks
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
Flag of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
SOLUTION
Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of jskfan

ASKER

Is Vcenter windows cluster aware ?
As Andrew mention, Vcenter failure does not have any impact in production, but if we have just one Vcenter and it fails then there will be no other tool to manage Vsphere environment. It will get worse if the VMware environment has many ESXi servers, then will have to connect separately to each ESXi to manage it. I do not even know if vsphere client lets you open multiple sessions to separate ESXi servers ?
SOLUTION
Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
SOLUTION
Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of jskfan

ASKER

I know Vcenter failure  will not break any other service. Just for the sake of easiness in Manageability.
With Vcenter it is easy to do your work on all VMs in any ESXi server.
I believe with Veeam tool you can have a good view of your VMware infrastructure, then if you need for instance to do snapshots, clones, manual vmotion,and a bunch of tasks, then you will know which ESX server is the VM in , and then just remote to that specific ESX and do the task you need.
Avatar of jskfan

ASKER

Another thing that I want to know about Vcenter, in the past I have reinstalled Vcenter without backing up SQL database. It was an SQL Express Database that was installed in the same box as Vcenter. Fortunately the re-install did not wipe out the existing Database and I wonder why it did not wipe it out..........
Well, if SQL database is installed in another Box, then let 's say I rebuild a server from OS installation all the way up to Vcenter installation, I believe the database will still  be safe. correct ?
SOLUTION
Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
SOLUTION
Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of jskfan

ASKER

The last thing Guys...
How can you tell which ESX server a specific VM resides on, if you do not have Vcenter available. ?
is there a tool ? a command line ?
can we open multiple sessions with Web client to separate ESX server ?
You can use DRS rules to bind vcenter to particular host or two.
Vsphere web client is component of vcenter, it can not connect to ESXi host even once.
SOLUTION
Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of jskfan

ASKER

Thank you Guys!