Veritas High Availability 7.3.1 Solution Guide for VMware - Linux

Last Published:
Product(s): InfoScale & Storage Foundation (7.3.1)
  1. Introducing the Veritas High Availability solution for VMware
    1. How the Veritas High Availability solution works in a VMware environment
      1.  
        How the Veritas HA Plug-in for vSphere Web Client works with VCS
      2.  
        How the VMwareDisks agent communicates with the vCenter Server instead of the ESX/ESXi host
      3.  
        Getting started with vCenter-integrated Veritas High Availability solution
      4. Getting started with the VIOM-integrated Veritas High Availability solution
        1.  
          About administering high availability with VOM
      5. Understanding Veritas High Availability terminology
        1.  
          Understanding operation names
      6.  
        Supported VMware versions
      7.  
        Important release information
  2. Deploying the Veritas High Availability solution
    1.  
      Managing storage
    2.  
      Installing the Veritas High Availability guest components
    3.  
      Upgrading Veritas High Availability guest components
  3. Administering application availability from the vSphere Client
    1.  
      Accessing the Veritas High Availability view
    2. Administering application monitoring from the Veritas High Availability view
      1. Understanding the Veritas High Availability view
        1.  
          To view the status of configured applications
      2.  
        Configuring a cluster by using the VCS cluster configuration wizard
      3.  
        To configure or unconfigure application monitoring
      4.  
        Adding a system to a VCS cluster
      5.  
        To start or stop applications
      6.  
        To switch an application to another system
      7.  
        To add or remove a failover system
      8.  
        To suspend or resume application monitoring
      9.  
        To clear Fault state
      10.  
        To resolve a held-up operation
      11.  
        To determine application state
      12.  
        To remove all monitoring configurations
      13.  
        To remove VCS cluster configurations
    3.  
      Administering application monitoring settings
    4. Administering application availability using Veritas High Availability dashboard
      1. Understanding the dashboard work area
        1.  
          Aggregate status bar
        2.  
          ESX cluster/host table
        3.  
          Taskbar
        4.  
          Filters menu
        5.  
          Application table
      2. Accessing the dashboard
        1.  
          Prerequisites for accessing the dashboard
        2.  
          How to access the dashboard
        3.  
          Who can access the dashboard
      3.  
        Monitoring applications across a data center
      4.  
        Monitoring applications across an ESX cluster
      5.  
        Searching for application instances by using filters
      6.  
        Selecting multiple applications for batch operations
      7.  
        Starting an application using the dashboard
      8.  
        Stopping an application by using the dashboard
      9.  
        Entering an application into maintenance mode
      10.  
        Bringing an application out of maintenance mode
      11.  
        Switching an application
      12.  
        Resolving dashboard alerts
  4. Appendix A. Roles and privileges
    1.  
      About the roles and privileges assigned in vCenter
    2. Assigning customized privileges to VMwareDisks agent
      1.  
        About assigning privileges to VMwareDisks agent
      2.  
        Creating a role with customized privileges for VMwareDisks agent
      3.  
        Creating an ESX user account
      4.  
        Integrating an ESX user account with Active Directory
      5.  
        Assigning a role to an ESX user account
  5. Appendix B. Troubleshooting
    1.  
      Agent logging on virtual machine
    2. Troubleshooting wizard-based configuration issues
      1.  
        Veritas High Availability Configuration wizard displays the "hadiscover is not recognized as an internal or external command" error
      2.  
        Running the 'hastop -all' command detaches virtual disks
      3.  
        Validation may fail when you add a failover system
      4.  
        Adding a failover system may fail if you configure a cluster with communication links over UDP
    3. Troubleshooting issues with the Veritas High Availability view
      1.  
        Veritas high availability view is not visible from a cluster system
      2.  
        Veritas High Availability view does not display the application monitoring status
      3.  
        Veritas High Availability view may freeze due to special characters in application display name
      4.  
        If the Console host abruptly restarts, the high availability view may disappear
      5.  
        Veritas high availability view may fail to load or refresh
      6.  
        Operating system commands to unmount resource may fail

How the Veritas High Availability solution works in a VMware environment

The Veritas High Availability solution for VMware employs Cluster Server (VCS) and its agent framework to monitor the state of applications and their dependent components running on the virtual machines that use non-shared storage. Specific agents are available to monitor the application, storage, and network components. Together, these agents monitor the overall health of the configured applications by running specific commands, tests, or scripts.

The storage configuration in the VMware virtual environment determines how VCS functions differently in a non-shared virtual environment. The non-shared storage configuration in the VMware virtual environment involves the VMware VMDK and RDM disks that reside on the shared datastore. This datastore is accessible to multiple virtual machines. However, the disks are attached to a single virtual machine at any given point of time. VCS provides a new storage agent "VMwareDisks" that communicates with the VMware ESX/ESXi hosts to perform the disk detach and attach operations to move the storage disk between the virtual machines, in a VCS cluster.

Note:

By default the VMwareDisks agent communicates with the ESX/ESXi host to perfom the disk detach and attach operations. However, instead of the ESX/ESXi hosts you can choose to communicate with the vCenter Server to perform these operations.

See How the VMwareDisks agent communicates with the vCenter Server instead of the ESX/ESXi host.

In the event of an application failure, the agents attempt to restart the application services and components for a configurable number of times. If the application fails to start, they initiate an application failover to the failover target system. During the failover, the VMwareDisks agent moves the storage disk to the failover target system, the network agents bring the network components online, and the application-specific agents then start the application services on the failover target system.

In case of a virtual machine fault, the VCS agents begin to fail over the application to the failover target system. The VMwareDisks agent sends a disk detach request to the ESX/ESXi host. After the detach operation is successful, the agent proceeds to attach the disks to the new failover target system.

In a scenario where the ESX/ESXi host itself faults, the VCS agents begin to fail over the application to the failover target system that resides on another host. The VMwareDisks agent communicates with the new ESX/ESXi host and initiates a disk detach operation on the faulted virtual machine. The agent then attaches the disk to the new failover target virtual machine.

For details on the VCS configuration concepts and clustering topologies, refer to the Cluster Server Administrator's Guide.

For details on the application agents, refer to the application-specific agent guide.

For details on the storage agents, refer to the Cluster Server Bundled Agents Reference Guide.