proper way to down whole vSphere environment Maintainance

[helltejas]

Hi

I want to know what is the proper way to turn down whole vmware vspher infrastructure

i think it should be in following sequence

1) turn down all VMs except vCenter

2)Turn off all hosts  except where vCenter is running

3)then turn off the vCenter

4)Login to remaing ESXi host and shut down that host

5) then we can shut down shared storage

am i right??

we have 10 ESXi server and 1 vCenter

does that process changes if we are using distributed vSwitch??

thank you

[mouradb]

are you using HA and DPM? if yes, you need to turn these off as well,

is your DC/DNS and DHCP located on a VM?

[helltejas]

yes i am using HA and DRS cluster not using DPM

yes my vm contain DHCP, DNS, and AD

Thank you for your quick reply

[arturka]

Hi

It is a correct order to shutdown whole thing. Remember about proper startup order as well 🙂

Cheers

Artur

Please, don't forget the awarding points for "helpful" and/or "correct" answers.

[helltejas]

Mouradb wrote:

are you using HA and DPM? if yes, you need to turn these off as well,

Hi,

Why do we need to turn off HA if we are turning down whole virtual infrastructure:smileyconfused:

all the VMs will be turned off properly...then how HA will affect?

will it affect while brunging up vSphere Environment?

Regards

Tejas

[mouradb · Accepted solution]

I'm not too sure if this will affect your VMs but it is advisable (VMware Best Practice)to turn off your HA, DRS and DPM in your vCenter to avoid any issue your maintenance will might cause.

from my experience, I always turn off these and vMotion the DC DHCP and vcenter into one box so that I can have these ready next time I bring up the servers and hosts.

[cdc1]

Things like Admission Control, DRS Rules, and Host Affinity (to name a few off the top of my head) are usually things that cause issues if you don't disable HA and DRS prior to shutting everything down.

Disabling HA and DRS prevents those things from bugging you (and provides for a much "cleaner" maintenance procedure overall.)