PCNS Advice Needed Please - VMware integration in a HA Cluster Environment

[Anonymous user]

Hi all,

I am currently in the process of configuring PCNS for our environment.  I have setup all my physical Windows servers how I want them, but I am struggling to work out the best thing to do for our virtual environment.  We have the following environment:

2 x HA Clusters (each cluster consisting of 3 x hosts)

vCenter is a running on a VM

PCNS (with the VMWare integration) is installed on physical Windows server

From what I understand, it is NOT possible to gracefully shutdown and/or restart VM's in an HA cluster environment and it needs to be scripted.

Is this correct?  What about just shutting down?  Is it possible to automate the graceful shutting down as this is more important to us than the restarting?

[BillP]

Mike,

PowerChute will shutdown and restart VMs in a HA cluster and it is possible to prioritize the shutdown and start up of the VMs. Basically PowerChute shuts down the VMs, then vCenter, then the hosts, and finally the system PowerChute is running on.

Please review Application note 180  and PowerChute VMware User's Guide.

[Anonymous user]

Hi Bill,

Thanks for your reply.  Application note 180 is very useful

I have read so much about the necessity to enable "virtual machine startup/shutdown" on the hosts, but this is greyed out (by design) in a HA cluster environment.

Is this something that is different between 4.0 and 4.1 and is no longer necessary to enable this feature?

Also, will PCNS automatically restart the hosts > VMs > vCenter VM when power is restored?

Also - apologies for my lack of space bar skills!  Not sure what is going on there!

[BillP · Accepted solution]

Hi,

On 11/10/2015 4:53 AM, Mike said:

I have read so much about the necessity to enable "virtual machine startup/shutdown" on the hosts, but this is greyed out (by design) in a HA cluster environment.

Startup/shutdown are grayed out on the host when a host is part of a HA cluster. VMware designed the system to do that with the understanding that VMs would be migrated to a new host and therefore would not need to be powered down.

Starting with PCNS 3.1 PowerChute can be configured to shutdown/startup the VMs. Beginning with PCNS version 4.1 VM shutdown/startup can be prioritized. VM Shutdown/Startup is discussed beginning on page 32 of the User's guide and prioritization is discussed starting on page 38.

NOTE: each VM must have VMware tools installed to enable PowerChute to shut it down and start it up. 

On 11/10/2015 4:53 AM, Mike said:

Also, will PCNS automatically restart the hosts > VMs > vCenter VM when power is restored?

PowerChute will restart the VMs and vCenter. Since PowerChute is off just like any other software application it cannot restart the host. To have the host restart when AC is restored you must configure PowerChute to shutdown the UPS after all the VMs, and host are powered off and configure the BIOS of each of the host to restart when AC is restored. This way the UPS cuts power to its outlets and when AC is restored will restore power to the outlets. When the UPS restores AC the computers BIOS will see that AC has been restored and the hosts will restart. Once the hosts are restarted PowerChute will restart vCenter and then the VMs. 

Host shutdown is discussed starting on page 19 of the User's Guide.

[Anonymous user]

Excellent - thank you very much for all your help.