Informational Guides vCenter Server

What if vCenter Server is Down &

What are the Impacts ?
Mayur Parmar   • July 17, 2019  2  15,202  5 minutes read

Every organization who uses vSphere in their environment they have

vCenter Server to manage all of their virtual infrastructure from single point.
vCenter provides centralized management of all the vSphere objects. In this
post we will see on what are the Impacts if vCenter is down or vCenter is not
available or when vCenter Server is offline.

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vCenter adds features to your vSphere Infra such as vMotion, DRS, HA, FT
etc. So for configuring & using this features vCenter is must for you. This all
features provides availability, load balancing & various functionality to your
ESXi hosts & virtual machines. So you can say that vCenter is very critical
part of your Infrastructure.

vCenter is crucial in every environment and provides easier management of

ESXi hosts & virtual machines. If you don’t have vCenter in your
environment then you will have to login to each ESXi hosts to create &
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manage virtual machine plus you will not get benefit of many features which
are only available in vCenter Server.

So let’s see which of the features & functionality will work when vCenter is
down & will not work when vCenter is down:

Central Management:
vCenter’s main benefit is to provide the Central management of all your
vSphere objects. So in case if vCenter Server is down or not available you
will not be able to manage all the objects centrally instead you will have to
login to each ESXi host to manage virtual machines and other objects.

ESXi hosts:
ESXi Hosts are independent servers which are added to vCenter to manage
all the hosts from single pane. So if in case if vCenter is down ESXi hosts will
not have much impact they will run smoothly. If you have large number of
ESXi hosts then it will be very complex situation to manage ESXi hosts.

Virtual Machines:
Virtual Machines are deployed on ESXi hosts but you use vCenter server to
create & manage virtual machines. So if vCenter is down your virtual
machines will run without any impact but you will need to login to each ESXi
hosts to manage your VMs. If you have large number of virtual machines
running on each ESXi host then it will be very difficult for you to find and
manage virtual machines.

Clone & Template:

Clone & Template are very useful feature when you want to perform large
deployment. But if vCenter is not available then you can not clone a VM &
you will not be able to Deploy VM from Template.

Snapshot:
Snapshot will not have any such impact if vCenter is down. You can still login
to ESXi host to create Snapshots of virtual machines.

vMotion & Storage vMotion:

vMotion & Storage vMotion are features of vCenter Server which provides
migration functionality to virtual machine & it’s storage. So if vCenter Server
is not available you will not be able to do any vMotion or Storage vMotion.
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DRS & Storage DRS:
DRS & Storage DRS are also features of vCenter Server which provides
automatic load balancing of Clusters & Datastore clusters by migrating VMs
& VMs Storage. So if vCenter is down then DRS will not be able to balance
the load of ESXi hosts & Storage DRS will not be able to balance the load of
datastores.

HA (High Availability):
HA is the feature of vCenter Server which provides the availability for your
virtual machines in case of ESXi host failure. HA is dependent on vCenter
Server to monitor protected virtual machines. So if vCenter is down then
currently protected virtual machines will be restarted on other ESXi hosts
but you will not be able to protect any new virtual machines until vCenter is
available. Also you won’t be able to make changes to any HA feature such as
Admission Control.

FT (Fault Tolerance):
FT is also the feature of vCenter Server which provides the complete
availability for virtual machine. In FT is primary VM is down then secondary
VM will take over to provide the availability. So in that case if vCenter server
is not available then FT will continue to run & secondary VM will be
available in case of primary VM failure but without vCenter new secondary
will not be created. Also you won’t be able to make changes in FT
Configuration.

vSS (vSphere Standard Switch):

vSS is created & managed at the ESXi host level & it provides connectivity
to virtual machines. But if vCenter Server is down there will be no impact on
vSphere Standard Switch. You can make any changes to vSS by logging into
ESXi hosts.

vDS (vSphere Distributed Switch):

vDS is created and managed by vCenter Server only & if you don’t have
vCenter you can not use vDS in your environment. Main functionality of vDS
is to provide centralized network management for all the ESXi hosts &
Virtual machines. So if vCenter Server is down then your ESXi & VMs

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network connectivity will not be impacted but you will not be able make any
changes in vDS settings.

VUM (VMware Update Manager):

From vSphere 6.5 & later VUM is completely integrated into vCenter Server.
VUM is used to patch & upgrade ESXi hosts in your environment. So if your
vCenter is not available you can not patch or upgrade ESXi hosts using VUM
but you will have to choose different ways such as command line. vCenter is
not available then you will also not be able to use the Maintenance mode to
migrate VMs you will have to shutdown the virtual machines.

You have seen above impacts of features & functionality on your vSphere
Infrastructure if vCenter server is not available. It is very important for you to
have your vCenter Server available at all the times.

So how you can protect your vCenter Server from failure or downtime:

One of the best feature from vSphere 6.5 & later to protect vCenter is VCHA
(vCenter High Availability) yes you can make your vCenter highly available
by configuring VCHA in your environment. (VCHA only supported in VCSA
not supported in windows based vCenter)

You can check below links as well on What is VCHA & How to configure
VCHA step by step:

What is VCHA ?

How to Configure VCHA Step by Step ?

Other things you can do is to take backup of vCenter Server so in case of

disaster you can use backup to restore vCenter Server. Backup & Restore is
now part of vCenter Appliance so you don’t have to depend on the third
party backup solutions. (Backup & Restore functionality is only available in
VCSA from vSphere 6.5 & later)

You can just login to your vCenter Server Appliance Management &
configure Backup directly & if you are using vSphere 6.7 then you can also
schedule backups.
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You can check below link on How to Backup & Restore vCenter using
vCenter Appliance Management :

How to Backup & Restore VCSA 6.5 Step by Step ?

That’s it for Today Friends. I Hope you liked reading this post & If you find
anything more to be added or removed feel free to write it in our
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2 Comments

Paul Vincent A. Fajardo

July 18, 2019 at 5:39 am

Hello Mayur,
A very nice topic which provides a good information on howto run
your vSphere environment should an issue will arise.

Paul Vincent A. Fajardo

Reply

Mayur Parmar
July 18, 2019 at 11:10 am

Hello Paul,
Yes thanks for the valuable opinion.

Reply

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