Overview: vCenter Server Heartbeat

Q3 2010

Confidential
2009 VMware Inc. All rights reserved

Agenda
Why is vCenter Server Availability Important?
What Needs to Be Protected?
Protecting vCenter with vCenter Server Heartbeat

vCenter Server: A Key Infrastructure Component

A universal hub for virtualization management

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How Do You Use vCenter Server?

Monitor cluster, host and VM performance

Manage VM and host provisioning
Patch and update hosts and VMs
Configure and operate VMotion, DRS, HA and FT
Provision and manage a VMware VIEW environment
Manage disaster recover plans
Test / develop VMs and applications
Allow access for third party applications

Impact of Downtime - External vCenter Applications

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Site Recovery
Manager

Chargeback

Lab Manager

vCenter Server

VIEW Server /
Composer

vCloud Director

AppSpeed

CapacityIQ

Impact of vCenter Server Downtime

Component

Impact Experienced

Virtual Machines

Management requires direct connections to host;

cant provision new VMs from templates

ESX Servers

Management requires direct connections to host

Performance & Monitoring

Statistics

Historical records will have gaps during outages,

still available via ESX Servers

VMotion / Storage VMotion

Unavailable

VMware DRS

Unavailable

vCenter Plug - Ins

Unavailable

VMware HA

HA failover works, admission control unavailable

VMware View

Cannot provision new desktop instances

VMware vCloud Director

Cannot allocate resources or provision VMs

Agenda
Why is vCenter Server Availability Important?
What Needs to Be Protected?
Protecting vCenter with vCenter Server Heartbeat

Determining a Strategy

Define the Scope of Protection Desired

Which is most important?
Local high availability for hardware/network failures?
Protecting application integrity and uptime against all types of threats?
Remote disaster recovery for large scale, site-wide outages?

Is uptime during maintenance windows needed?

What is the recovery time objective?
Need to base this on what functionality is unavailable during vCenter Server
outage

How Do You Protect vCenter Server Today?

No protection
Keep a backup copy archived
Cold standby server
Clustering
VMware HA

Protecting vCenter Server

Replication of
state files

vCenter
Services

vCenter
Inventory

vCenter Server

vCenter Server

(Primary)

(Standby)

Standard DR Solution

Database Server

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Database Server

What is required to restore vCenter functionality?

vCenter Server is an almost stateless application

Data stored in the vCenter database is the most critical resource
Following data is necessary to restore the vCenter functionality
(with intact database)
vCenter server IP Address
DNS name for ODBC connection
License files for the License Manager Server
Security Certificates
vCenter Configuration file
vCenter Plug-in data
Customized data from upgrade directory (if applicable)

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Agenda
Why is vCenter Server Availability Important?
What Needs to Be Protected?
Protecting vCenter with vCenter Server Heartbeat

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Solutions for Protecting vCenter Server

vCenter downtime greatly impacts productivity of VI Administrators
However, several options can be used to mitigate the potential for vCenter
Server downtime

The solution of choice will depend on level of protection desired and recovery
point objectives.

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VMware Solutions

Third-Party Solutions

VMware HA

Backup

VMware vCenter Server

Heartbeat

Clustering
Host Replication

Overview: VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat

Extends availability for the vCenter Server platform

Add-on to vCenter Server protects critical components of the
infrastructure

Deep awareness of all vCenter Server components

Simple configuration and deployment
Replicates all data and transactions to a standby server
Failover of the application and database over the LAN or WAN

Best-of breed-technology
VMware has selected Neverfail to provide the underlying technology
Proven technology supports SQL, Exchange, Blackberry availability
vCenter Server Heartbeat is a VMware product and fully supported
by VMware

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Complete Protection for vCenter Server

Hardware

OS

Failures

Failures

vCenter Server

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Network

Application

Failures

Failures

vCenter Server Heartbeat

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vCenter Server Heartbeat Architecture

Purely software-based
solution with no dependencies

Paired Servers with Shared

Nothing Architecture

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Active/Passive clone
Hardware Agnostic
Physical & Virtual Support
Application Awareness (AMF)
Hardware and Software
Redundancy

Whats New in vCenter Server Heartbeat 6.3

Unified management of multiple nodes

Manage availability for groups of vCenter Servers from a single UI
Distributed vCenter Servers and SQL databases can be managed as pairs

Simplified UI
Tree structure shows overall health and availability status of all servers
Easier-to-use interface for managing thresholds and alerts in Heartbeat

Extends Heartbeat protection to View Composer

Support for vCenter Server 4.1 and 4.0 Update 2
Improved platform support native x64, Windows Server 2008 R2

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vCenter Server Heartbeat: Improved User Interface

Simplified
hierarchy view
of all protected
services

Status information on
Primary Server

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Comparing vCenter Server Heartbeat

Deeper more granular protection than other solutions

Host
Replication

Heartbeat

Hardware & OS failures

Yes

Yes

Configuration Agnostic

Yes

Yes

Partial

Yes

Medium-High

Low

Protects vCenter Server

components

No

Yes

Network failures

No

Yes

WAN failover
Complexity

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vCenter Server Heartbeat: Defense in Depth

Complete

vCenter
Heartbeat

Depth of
HA
protection

Replication
Clustering
VMware
HA

Hardware
/OS
Specific

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Breadth of workloads
supported

All

Summary: Why vCenter Server Heartbeat?

High availability for VC is growing in importance for customers

running VMware in production
Underlying infrastructure needs to be fully protected, especially
for VDI and cloud environments
HA provides robust general-purpose protection of virtualized
workloads
Need to protect against configuration errors, network failures, OS
failures, database failures with WAN failover support
Many customers run vCenter Server on a physical server
Other solutions are expensive, complex and lack app awareness,
support for database, WAN failover
Customers have been asking for a VMware solution that provides
more granular availability for vCenter Server

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