the Sky is the Limit
I recent times I frequently see vCenter server appliances (VCSA), whose root partitions ran out of free space. As a result services are unable to start after reboot. There are some tricks to free some space on root but on the long run you should increase the partition size.
Sounds simple – but it’s quite tricky and a bit dangerous. Don’t try this at home! 😉
The vCenterServer Appliance (VCSA) is becoming more and more important. Many vSphere-related services rely deeply on the availability of vCenter. So it was a logic move to make vCenter more available by having an active, a passive and a witness node of vCenter in your cluster. In case the active appliance breaks, the passive appliance will take over.
I’ve been experimenting with VCHA for a while. Although I’m not yet satisfied with the failover time (5-10 minutes), I think it is a move into the right direction. I wouldn’t call it “high” availability right now – maybe “elevated” availability. But nevertheless the failover time might be alright for many environments today and it is used for production. That raises an important question:
If you have a standalone VC you’ll just make a backup or replica and you’re finished. But VCHA consists of 3 components and before backing up you’ll need to find out which one is the active node, because VMware only supports VADP-based backups (VMware vStorage API for Data Protection) of the active node. There’s no point in backing up the passive node or the witness. Keep in mind that active and passive node may have switched roles since last backup! Continue reading “Backup vCenter Server High Availability nodes”
Veeam Evangelist Michael White hat ein neues Whitepaper veröffentlicht zur Sicherung der vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) und des Platform Service Controllers (PSC). Zum Download ist eine Anmeldung mit dem Veeam Konto erforderlich.
In the old days of virtualization a vCenter used to be a nice-to-have commodity. But these times are long gone (at least from an IT point of view). In today’s datacenter many services and applications rely heavily on vCenter. Some of the most common use-cases are VDI-environments, cluster balancing mechanisms like DRS or Storage-DRS and even backup software needs vCenter.
The last one is a crucial point. It’s good to have your vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) backed up regularly and most of you and your customers will likely do so. But think of what would happen if you’d loose your vCenter for like 10 minutes or even an hour.
It’s not just important to have a backup of it – you also need to return to operation fast and minimize your Recovery-Time-Objective (RTO). Continue reading “Why you should replicate your vCenter Appliance”