asked on

Sequence of Safely shutting down servers and powering on again.

Hi

We have new infrastructure with Dell Power Edge servers with DELL Powervault ME4 storage connected with 12G SAS.
We use VMware Vcenter appliance.

I have powered off the old servers. Now I would like to shut down the new infrastructure safely and move the servers to a different rack and power on the servers again.
Please post me sequence of shutting down and powering on the server’s safety, including core switches.

Thanks and suggestion much appreciated.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

serialband

If you have fully redundant servers with enough coverage for the VMs, and you have redundant storage. You can just put each ESX server into maintenance mode, let all the VMs migrate, then power off each ESX server and move them. If you have multiple switches in HA mode, you could shut down one at a time and move those as well. The final piece is the 12 GB SAS, do you have 2 units? If yes, you can just migrate them all from one to the other, shut off the one without any live VMs and move them. If you have proper redundancy, all of it can be moved without any downtime whatsoever.

Unfortunately, if any part of it is not redundant, you will need to safely shut down the entire thing to make the move. I did make one live move with a unit that had dual power supplies. Everything else was redundant except that one unit, but it did have 2 power supplies. That is not something that I'd recommend, but it can be done. You just have to be careful not to accidentally pull out both power plugs at the same time. Good thing the place was chilled, or I'd be sweating bullets until it was done.

lianne143

ASKER

Thanks for all your help!

Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)