VCS install with ESX
Created: 07 Dec 2012 | Updated: 07 Mar 2013 | 8 comments
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In 5.0, we support VCS installed on ESX server and related agent to monitor virtual machine to monitor VMs, do we still have this support in latest version, like afterward 6.0?
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I mean the related agent to monitor virtual machine and failover vms if failure happen
Cluster Server for VMWare was only available for 5.x - now you can use ApplicationHA instead - see http://www.symantec.com/application-ha for an overview which has points such as:
For more indepth information see https://sort.symantec.com/documents/doc_details/appha/6.0/Linux/ProductGuides/
Mike
UK Symantec Consultant in VCS, GCO, SF, VVR, VxAT on Solaris, AIX, HP-ux, Linux & Windows
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Thanks, Mike. If ApplicationHA, can it work with VVR feature enabled? or can we register VVR license? Does AppHA has the agent to failover virtual machine from one ESX to another?
Wendi,
Mike is correct, VCS for ESX was EOL'd a while back. Since VMware stopped supporting 3rd party applications installed at the hypervisor/console layer (thus the ESXi model) we could no longer sustain the product past ESX 4.1.
You can think of ApplicationHA as a one-node VCS cluster that is responsible for application start stop only. For any actions requiring the movement of the VM itself, VMware HA would be responsible for the "heavy lifting." That said, Just this past October, we announced VCS and SF support for full VMDK and VMware advanced features. Meaning you can now have an in guest cluster managing your applications (VVR included) while not disabling VMotion, DRS, SRM and even VMHA if you so choose.
Please take a look at this video for more details.
http://www.symantec.com/connect/videos/vcs-application-failover-within-vmware-virtual-machines
Hope this helps.
Joe D
I have not used ApplicationHA, but just to clarify how I THINK It works - Joe please correct me if I am wrong.
As ESX no longer supports 3rd party applications, such as VCS, installed at the hypervisor, for ApplicationHA, VCS is installed in the Virtual Machine (VM). But you have always been able to install VCS in the VM where, essentially, VCS is not aware that is is installed in a virtual, rather than physical server (this is what I do on my laptop running VMWare Workstation, rather than VMWare ESX, but it is the same prinicple). So what I believe ApplicationHA gives is that it still has VCS agents, but instead of "had" daemon communcating resource (Application, IP etc) health to other nodes in a cluster via LLT & GAB, ApplicationHA, does not have LLT & GAB and instead communicates resource state to the VMWare Management tool - VMware vCenter.
So SF (and VVR) can run in Virtual Machine rather than Hypervisor, but I believe you couldn't run SF in the Hypervisor for VCS for ESX either as ONLY VCS ran in the Hypervisor.
What I am unsure about, is what agents are availlable as the "Linux on VMWare" User guide says:
UK Symantec Consultant in VCS, GCO, SF, VVR, VxAT on Solaris, AIX, HP-ux, Linux & Windows
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Application HA agents although share the same basic framework and logic as VCS, they are in fact released on a slightly different cadence than full fledged VCS. That said, most of the infrastructure agents are ubiquitous, however, the enterprise application agent support is not the same across both platforms.
Here are the enterprise agents that are supported on RHEL with Application HA 6.0:
Apache
IBM DB2
IBM WebSphere
IBM WebSphere MQ
JBoss Application Server
MySQL
Oracle Database
Oracle WebLogic Server
SAP NetWeaver
http://sort.symatnec.com/agents has all of the details.
VCS on the other hand supports considerably more agents.
Joe D
If you want to make VMs can failover from one ESX host to another, you can use new features included in SFWHA6.0.1, there is new agent which can monitor VMs and detach VMDK files from on ESX host when failover occur and then attach VMDk files to another ESX host.
Just to clarify, information from last post:
From 6.0.1 in Windows SFWHA and 6.0.2 for Linux SFHA there is a new "VMwareDisks" agent which is what Joe mentions in his first post above. This agent does not monior the VM (this is already done by VCS heatbeats for VCS running in the VM guest), it is used for attaching and detatching VMDK disks, which means you can use VMDK disks, rather then having to use Raw Device Mappings (RDM) as was the case in the past, so using this agent means vMotion, Dynamic Resource Scheduler (DRS) and snapshots are supported. With this new agent, VCS does not fail over the VM like it did with VCS for ESX, as VCS runs in the guest, and so applications are failed over from one VM guest to another VM guest.
I have not used this new agent, but this is my understanding of how it works.
Mike
UK Symantec Consultant in VCS, GCO, SF, VVR, VxAT on Solaris, AIX, HP-ux, Linux & Windows
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