esxi vcenter DVS all points down - instant recovery?

[dwithers]

We are beginning evaluation of veeam for our enterprise. Have a scenario I need a definitive answer on. I can follow up with any information I may need to add.

In a scenario where vCenter and all points are down. We get to a place where network is back up, esx hosts are back up, san is back up, but vCenter is completely hosed.
Making the assumption that my database is functioning, and I want to restore my vCenter from a known good Veeam backup using Instant Recovery, will having all Distributed Switches allow this to be possible via instant recovery? I know i can just point to an esxi host instead of vcenter for Instant recovery, but am curious about the DVS portion. Let me nkow if i can provide more detail. We do not currently own Veeam but are beginning the evaluation for our company.

Please note again, this would be an all DVS infrastructure, no vswitch. Let me know if i can provide more detail if my question is unclear about Instant Recovery being able to get our vcenter back online. I do realize that if vcenter is down i do need to point Instant Recovery directly to an online esxi host. But does that work with an all DVS infrastructure? Thanks.

[dellock6]

The problem you are referring to is well known, and usually refers to the "invalid backing" of the vm network while it's beeing powered on.

At customers with a 100% VDS design like yours, I always used a quick trick: create the management port group (the one where you connect vCenter, its DB VM, and all other VM you need to manage the environment) and configure it with ephemeral binding. In this way it does not need vCenter to connect a virtual network, since there is no binding.

I can't find right now the docs, but I recall this problem has been fixed in later 5.0 patches, and maybe is no more a problem in 5.1, need to better check.

Luca.