vCenter High Availability

[AndrewBk]

So I asked this previously, more as a "VCHA has broken Veeam!!!" post a little while back.
It was pretty much forgotten about because the decision was made to not use it.

Now, we have had an issue and we are looking to re-instate vSphere 6.7 vCenter HA and the questions I have are, is Veeam B&R 9.5u4 compatible with the technology? Do I need to do anything special to make it work with both vCenters? What is the best way forward to use Veeam and VCSA HA?

TIA

Helpdesk call #03666037

[AndrewBk]

Follow Up...

Having had a back and forth with support with Veeam and VMware, it transpires that Veeam Backup and Replication DOES NOT support this technology.

So a warning to those using it, or wanting to, that a vCenter failover will render your hosts undetectable and will cause your backups to fail.

[LeeR]

Hi All,

I am just setting up our vCenter 6.7 U2 backups, i've found various articles relating to vCenter backups but not for vCenters with HA configured.

Does anyone have any tips on how this should be done?

Thanks in advance.

Lee

[wishr]

Hi Lee,

Welcome to Veeam Community Forums and thanks for posting!

Just to clarify, would you like to backup VMs or VCSAs themselves?

Thanks

[LeeR]

Hi wishr,

Thanks for the quick reply!

I would like to backup the VM's, I have already got a vCenter configuration backup running.

Regards,
Lee

[wishr]

Dear Lee,

One more question to be sure we are talking about the same thing: are you asking about vCenter HA or vSphere HA?

Thanks

[LeeR]

Hi,

Its vCenter HA

Regards,
Lee

[sosborne]

I found VCHA to be a pain as I had the other nodes on a remote site and certain conditions (high WAN load for an extended period) could cause it to failover erroneously. And if these conditions fluctuated it could try and failback but not be able to complete and end up broken.

I have a vCenter replica now (configured via a host) and run on a backup server that sits in the remote data center. Plus backups that exist on both sites.

[Andreas Neufert]

Yes, VCHA is challenging from network perspective, specificially if you use it over WAN.
It has a 10ms network latency requirement (LAN) which can be hardly achieved over WAN.

[wishr]

Hello gentlemen,

vCenter HA has not been tested yet in our QC labs, however, it is something we'd like to consider for the future. I'll post the results here, but please do not expect them to appear in the near time.

Opposite to the above, vSphere HA is fully supported by Veeam.

Regards,
Fedor

[shkap]

Curious as to the status of this. I have a ticket opened and have been told that vcha is being tested. Has anyone deployed it, had a failover and subsequent VEEAM failure? If so, how did they recover? I'm being pushed to deploy VCHA but am resistant due to it's impact on VEEAM.
Thanks,
Seth

[wishr]

Hi Shkap,

No updates and ETA yet. I'll update this thread with the results once done.

Thanks

[crackocain]

Actually this situation understandable.

Vcenter HA failover time about 2-5 minutes at least. Why Veeam wait this vcenter was disconnected? Maybe for the future vcenter ha failover time is lower to 5 to 10 seconds.

[oliverL]

And even if you want to back it up, make sure you got all 3 pieces of it (even tough it is not supported), because in case of a restore you might restore the wrong node which couldn't bringt the services up because its replication partner is missing and/or the witness is not there.

So in the end, the restore of vCenter-HA is more of a hazzle then a redeploy with the configuration backup.

Make sure you scheduled the vCenter configuration backup trough the vami interface and redeploy your vCenter with that. It takes 1-2 hours but it is the most supported way. Especially if you got distributed switches running and the vCenter uses portgroups from them.

[andrewmoore]

Hi All,

I'm looking into setting up vCenter HA and I'm curious about the process of backing the VMs up using Veeam.

You have an A and B vCenter, either of these can be the active node at any time. Do you backup just one with Veeam, both?

Thanks in advance.

[Egor Yakovlev]

Hi Andrew,
please check answers above. As VMware vCenter HA Protection Guide says, you should always backup only Active node. If Active node switches, Veeam will be unaware and job must be changed accordingly. Recovery is tricky too - you should delete all existing vCenter HA nodes first, and recover Active node alone, with manual HA rebuild after. After all, it is best to use official File-Based vCenter backup - you will have to rebuild vCenter HA from the scratch in any case.
/Cheers!