vCenter 6.7 HA Setup - Part 1

As of version 6.5, vCenter came with an HA (High Availability) option for the Appliance. With 6.7u1, with now have an even more simplified implementation ability. This article is a part one introduction to the HA setup process and some of the basic requirements.

vCenter HA Components

  • Active Appliance (Deployed vCSA)
  • Passive Appliance (Full clone of Active)
  • Witness Appliance (lightweight clone of Active) Only has NIC1 (HA Network) configured for split-brain protection

vCenter HA Requirements

  • ESXi 6.0 or later with a minimum of three ESXi Hosts (more about HA\DRS later)
  • Deployment size of small or bigger is required to meet the RTO Do NOT use Tiny in production environments
  • The vCenter HA network must be on a different subnet than the management network.
  • The vCenter HA network latency between Active, Passive, and Witness nodes must be less than 10 ms.
  • vCenter HA requires a single vCenter Server license. (Standard)

Firewall Port Requirements for the HA Network

Port Protocol Nodes Description
22 TCP Bidirectional between all three nodes System port for SSHD
5432 TCP Bidirectional between Active & Passive Postgres
8182 TCP Bidirectional between all three nodes Fault Domain Manager
8182 UDP Bidirectional between all three nodes Fault Domain Manager

In vCenter 6.7 HA Setup - Part 2, I will walk you thru the actual HA configuration steps.