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Page 1: Symantec High Availability 6.2 Solution Guide for VMware ... · Introducing the Symantec High Availability solution for VMware Thischapterincludesthefollowingtopics: HowtheSymantecHighAvailabilitysolutionworksinaVMwareenvironment

Symantec High Availability6.2 Solution Guide forVMware - Linux

November 2014

Page 2: Symantec High Availability 6.2 Solution Guide for VMware ... · Introducing the Symantec High Availability solution for VMware Thischapterincludesthefollowingtopics: HowtheSymantecHighAvailabilitysolutionworksinaVMwareenvironment

Symantec™ High Availability Solution Guide forVMware

The software described in this book is furnished under a license agreement and may be usedonly in accordance with the terms of the agreement.

Product version: 6.2

Document version: 6.2 Rev 1

Legal NoticeCopyright © 2014 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved.

Symantec, the Symantec Logo, the Checkmark Logo, Veritas, Veritas Storage Foundation,CommandCentral, NetBackup, Enterprise Vault, and LiveUpdate are trademarks or registeredtrademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. Othernames may be trademarks of their respective owners.

The product described in this document is distributed under licenses restricting its use, copying,distribution, and decompilation/reverse engineering. No part of this document may bereproduced in any form by any means without prior written authorization of SymantecCorporation and its licensors, if any.

THE DOCUMENTATION IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND ALL EXPRESS OR IMPLIEDCONDITIONS, REPRESENTATIONS AND WARRANTIES, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIEDWARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ORNON-INFRINGEMENT, ARE DISCLAIMED, EXCEPT TO THE EXTENT THAT SUCHDISCLAIMERSAREHELD TOBE LEGALLY INVALID. SYMANTECCORPORATIONSHALLNOT BE LIABLE FOR INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES IN CONNECTIONWITH THE FURNISHING, PERFORMANCE, OR USE OF THIS DOCUMENTATION. THEINFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS DOCUMENTATION IS SUBJECT TO CHANGEWITHOUT NOTICE.

The Licensed Software and Documentation are deemed to be commercial computer softwareas defined in FAR 12.212 and subject to restricted rights as defined in FAR Section 52.227-19"Commercial Computer Software - Restricted Rights" and DFARS 227.7202, "Rights inCommercial Computer Software or Commercial Computer Software Documentation", asapplicable, and any successor regulations, whether delivered by Symantec as on premisesor hosted services. Any use, modification, reproduction release, performance, display ordisclosure of the Licensed Software and Documentation by the U.S. Government shall besolely in accordance with the terms of this Agreement.

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Symantec Corporation350 Ellis StreetMountain View, CA 94043

http://www.symantec.com

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Technical SupportSymantec Technical Support maintains support centers globally. Technical Support’sprimary role is to respond to specific queries about product features and functionality.The Technical Support group also creates content for our online Knowledge Base.The Technical Support group works collaboratively with the other functional areaswithin Symantec to answer your questions in a timely fashion. For example, theTechnical Support group works with Product Engineering and Symantec SecurityResponse to provide alerting services and virus definition updates.

Symantec’s support offerings include the following:

■ A range of support options that give you the flexibility to select the right amountof service for any size organization

■ Telephone and/or Web-based support that provides rapid response andup-to-the-minute information

■ Upgrade assurance that delivers software upgrades

■ Global support purchased on a regional business hours or 24 hours a day, 7days a week basis

■ Premium service offerings that include Account Management Services

For information about Symantec’s support offerings, you can visit our website atthe following URL:

www.symantec.com/business/support/index.jsp

All support services will be delivered in accordance with your support agreementand the then-current enterprise technical support policy.

Contacting Technical SupportCustomers with a current support agreement may access Technical Supportinformation at the following URL:

www.symantec.com/business/support/contact_techsupp_static.jsp

Before contacting Technical Support, make sure you have satisfied the systemrequirements that are listed in your product documentation. Also, you should be atthe computer on which the problem occurred, in case it is necessary to replicatethe problem.

When you contact Technical Support, please have the following informationavailable:

■ Product release level

■ Hardware information

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■ Available memory, disk space, and NIC information

■ Operating system

■ Version and patch level

■ Network topology

■ Router, gateway, and IP address information

■ Problem description:

■ Error messages and log files

■ Troubleshooting that was performed before contacting Symantec

■ Recent software configuration changes and network changes

Licensing and registrationIf your Symantec product requires registration or a license key, access our technicalsupport Web page at the following URL:

www.symantec.com/business/support/

Customer serviceCustomer service information is available at the following URL:

www.symantec.com/business/support/

Customer Service is available to assist with non-technical questions, such as thefollowing types of issues:

■ Questions regarding product licensing or serialization

■ Product registration updates, such as address or name changes

■ General product information (features, language availability, local dealers)

■ Latest information about product updates and upgrades

■ Information about upgrade assurance and support contracts

■ Information about the Symantec Buying Programs

■ Advice about Symantec's technical support options

■ Nontechnical presales questions

■ Issues that are related to CD-ROMs or manuals

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Support agreement resourcesIf you want to contact Symantec regarding an existing support agreement, pleasecontact the support agreement administration team for your region as follows:

[email protected] and Japan

[email protected], Middle-East, and Africa

[email protected] America and Latin America

About Symantec ConnectSymantec Connect is the peer-to-peer technical community site for Symantec’senterprise customers. Participants can connect and share information with otherproduct users, including creating forum posts, articles, videos, downloads, blogsand suggesting ideas, as well as interact with Symantec product teams andTechnical Support. Content is rated by the community, and members receive rewardpoints for their contributions.

http://www.symantec.com/connect/storage-management

DocumentationYour feedback on product documentation is important to us. Send suggestions forimprovements and reports on errors or omissions. Include the title and documentversion (located on the second page), and chapter and section titles of the text onwhich you are reporting. Send feedback to:

[email protected]

For information regarding the latest HOWTO articles, documentation updates, orto ask a question regarding product documentation, visit the Storage and ClusteringDocumentation forum on Symantec Connect.

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/storage-management/forums/storage-and-clustering-documentation

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Technical Support ............................................................................................... 4

Chapter 1 Introducing the Symantec High Availability solutionfor VMware ..................................................................... 11

How the Symantec High Availability solution works in a VMwareenvironment .......................................................................... 11How the Symantec HA Plug-in for vSphere Web Client works with

VCS .............................................................................. 13How the VMwareDisks agent communicates with the vCenter

Server instead of the ESX/ESXi host .................................... 14Getting started with vCenter-integrated Symantec High Availability

solution .......................................................................... 16Getting started with the VOM-integrated Symantec High Availability

solution .......................................................................... 21Understanding Symantec High Availability terminology ................... 23

About setting up the Symantec High Availability solution ....................... 26Supported VMware versions ........................................................... 29

Chapter 2 Deploying the Symantec High Availabilitysolution ........................................................................... 31

Managing storage ........................................................................ 31Installing the Symantec High Availability guest components .................. 32

Supported guest operating systems ........................................... 33About installing Symantec High Availability guest components

using the vSphere Client menu ............................................ 34Copying the platform-specific guest installation RPMs .................... 34Installing Symantec High Availability guest components using the

vSphere Client menu ......................................................... 35Upgrading Symantec High Availability guest components ..................... 39Configuring single sign-on between the virtual machine and the

Symantec High Availability Console ........................................... 39Managing the licenses for Symantec High Availability solution ............... 40

Managing the licenses through vSphere Client menu ..................... 41

Contents

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Chapter 3 Administering application availability from thevSphere Client ................................................................ 42

Accessing the Symantec High Availability view ................................... 42Administering application monitoring from the Symantec High

Availability view ...................................................................... 43Understanding the Symantec High Availability view ...................... 44Configuring a cluster by using the VCS cluster configuration

wizard ............................................................................ 48To configure or unconfigure application monitoring ........................ 51Adding a system to a VCS cluster .............................................. 52To start or stop applications ...................................................... 55To switch an application to another system .................................. 56To add or remove a failover system ............................................ 57To suspend or resume application monitoring ............................... 61To clear Fault state ................................................................. 62To resolve a held-up operation .................................................. 62To determine application state ................................................... 63To remove all monitoring configurations ...................................... 63To remove VCS cluster configurations ........................................ 63

Administering application monitoring settings ..................................... 64Administering application availability using Symantec High Availability

dashboard ............................................................................ 65Understanding the dashboard work area ..................................... 66Accessing the dashboard ......................................................... 69Monitoring applications across a data center ............................... 71Monitoring applications across an ESX cluster .............................. 71Monitoring applications running on Symantec ApplicationHA

guests ............................................................................ 71Searching for application instances by using filters ........................ 71Selecting multiple applications for batch operations ....................... 72Starting an application using the dashboard ................................. 72Stopping an application by using the dashboard ........................... 73Entering an application into maintenance mode ............................ 73Bringing an application out of maintenance mode .......................... 74Switching an application .......................................................... 75Resolving dashboard alerts ...................................................... 75Deleting stale records .............................................................. 76

Appendix A Roles and privileges ............................................................ 77

About the roles and privileges assigned in vCenter .............................. 77Assigning customized privileges to VMwareDisks agent ...................... 78

About assigning privileges to VMwareDisks agent ......................... 78

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Creating a role with customized privileges for VMwareDisksagent ............................................................................. 79

Creating an ESX user account .................................................. 79Integrating an ESX user account with Active Directory ................... 80Assigning a role to an ESX user account ..................................... 80

Appendix B Guest component installation parameters .................... 82

Symantec High Availability guest components installationparameters ........................................................................... 82

Appendix C Troubleshooting .................................................................. 84

Agent logging on virtual machine ..................................................... 84Troubleshooting Symantec High Availability guest components

installation and SSO configuration issues .................................... 85Restarting the vCenter Server or its service during the Symantec

High Availability guest components installation displays "Error"in vSphere Client tasks ...................................................... 85

Reverting the system snapshot requires you to cancel theSymantec High Availability guest componentsinstallation ...................................................................... 86

Reversal to snapshot leads to an IP resource fault ........................ 86SSO configuration failure ......................................................... 87Issues due to disruption of SSO configuration .............................. 87Powering on a suspended system leads to an IP resource

fault ............................................................................... 87Troubleshooting wizard-based configuration issues ............................. 88

Symantec High Availability Configuration Wizard displays blankpanels ............................................................................ 88

Symantec High Availability Configuration wizard displays the"hadiscover is not recognized as an internal or externalcommand" error ............................................................... 88

Running the 'hastop -all' command detaches virtual disks ............... 89Validation may fail when you add a failover system ........................ 89Adding a failover system may fail if you configure a cluster with

communication links over UDP ............................................ 89Troubleshooting dashboard issues ................................................... 90

A system does not appear on the dashboard ................................ 90Task-specific panels launched from dashboard, do not display

description for alerts .......................................................... 90Reporting on the Dashboard ..................................................... 91

Troubleshooting issues with the Symantec High Availability view ............ 91

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Symantec high availability view is not visible from a clustersystem ........................................................................... 91

Symantec High Availability view does not display the applicationmonitoring status .............................................................. 92

Symantec High Availability view may freeze due to specialcharacters in application display name .................................. 92

If the Console host abruptly restarts, the high availability view maydisappear ....................................................................... 93

In the Symantec High Availability view, the Add Failover Systemlink is dimmed .................................................................. 93

Symantec high availability view may fail to load or refresh ............... 93An alert icon appears in the Symantec High Availability view ........... 94Operating system commands to unmount resource may fail ............ 94Symantec High Availability View displays health information for

incorrect virtual machine .................................................... 95

10Contents

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Introducing the SymantecHigh Availability solutionfor VMware

This chapter includes the following topics:

■ How the Symantec High Availability solution works in a VMware environment

■ About setting up the Symantec High Availability solution

■ Supported VMware versions

How the Symantec High Availability solution worksin a VMware environment

The Symantec High Availability solution for VMware employs Symantec ClusterServer (VCS) and its agent framework to monitor the state of applications and theirdependent components running on the virtual machines that use non-shared storage.Specific agents are available to monitor the application, storage, and networkcomponents. Together, these agents monitor the overall health of the configuredapplications by running specific commands, tests, or scripts.

The storage configuration in the VMware virtual environment determines how VCSfunctions differently in a non-shared virtual environment. The non-shared storageconfiguration in the VMware virtual environment involves the VMware VMDK andRDM disks that reside on the shared datastore. This datastore is accessible tomultiple virtual machines. However, the disks are attached to a single virtual machineat any given point of time. VCS provides a new storage agent “VMwareDisks” thatcommunicates with the VMware ESX/ESXi hosts to perform the disk detach and

1Chapter

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attach operations to move the storage disk between the virtual machines, in a VCScluster.

Note:By default the VMwareDisks agent communicates with the ESX/ESXi host toperfom the disk deatch and attach operations. However, instead of the ESX/ESXihosts you can choose to communicate with the vCenter Server to perform theseoperations.

See “How the VMwareDisks agent communicates with the vCenter Server insteadof the ESX/ESXi host” on page 14.

In event of an application failure, the agents attempt to restart the applicationservices and components for a configurable number of times. If the application failsto start, they initiate an application fail over to the failover target system. During thefail over, the VMwareDisks agent moves the storage disk to the failover targetsystem, the network agents bring the network components online, and theapplication-specific agents then start the application services on the failover targetsystem.

In case of a virtual machine fault, the VCS agents begin to fail over the applicationto the failover target system. The VMwareDisks agent sends a disk detach requestto the ESX/ESXi host. After the detach operation is successful, the agent proceedsto attach the disks to the new failover target system.

In a scenario where the ESX/ESXi host itself faults, the VCS agents begin to failover the application to the failover target system that resides on another host. TheVMwareDisks agent communicates with the new ESX/ESXi host and initiates a diskdetach operation on the faulted virtual machine. The agent then attaches the diskto the new failover target virtual machine.

In the event of a failure when VMware Site Recovery Manager is configured for thevirtual machines, the following tasks are performed for application monitoringcontinuity:

■ The virtual machines at the protected site are failed over to the recovery site.

■ The pre-online script defined in the form of a command in the SRM recoveryplan applies the specified attribute values for the application components.

■ The status monitoring script retrieves the application status.

■ The network agents bring the network components online and theapplication-specific agents start the application services on the failover targetsystem.

For details on the VCS configuration concepts and clustering topologies, refer tothe Symantec Cluster Server Administrator’s Guide.

12Introducing the Symantec High Availability solution for VMwareHow the Symantec High Availability solution works in a VMware environment

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For details on the application agents, refer to the application-specific agent guide.

For details on the storage agents, refer to the VCS Bundled Agents ReferenceGuide.

How the Symantec HA Plug-in for vSphere Web Client works withVCS

The following diagram illustrates how the Symantec HA Plug-In for vSphere WebClient is deployed in a VMware virtual environment to support Symantec ClusterServer (VCS) tasks.

Figure 1-1 Deployment diagram

Note:The Symantec HA Plug-In for vSphereWeb Client supports the high availabilitymode of the Veritas Operations Manager Management Server (primary andsecondary nodes). The plug-in also simultaneously supports multiple vCenterServers. For simplicity, these components are not illustrated in the above diagram.Also, while the vSphere Web client support exists for multiple-node VCS clusters,for simplicity a single-node cluster of VCS is illustrated in this diagram.

The Symantec HA Plug-in for vSphere Web Client is distributed as an add-on forthe Veritas Operations Manager Management Server 6.1.

You must first install the add-on on the management server. You must also registerthe Symantec HA Plug-in for vSphere Web Client with all the required vCenterservers. As a result, the Symantec High Availability tab is inserted in the vSphereWeb Client GUI.

13Introducing the Symantec High Availability solution for VMwareHow the Symantec High Availability solution works in a VMware environment

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If you add the VCS guests (virtual machines) to Veritas Operations ManagerManagement Server as managed hosts, the management server discovers thehealth status of the applications monitored by VCS. The Management Server relaysthis information to the vCenter Server. This information is displayed in the SymantecHigh Availability tab of the vSphere Web Client.

Inside the Monitor tab of the vSphere Web Client, the Symantec High Availabilitytab is inserted. If you navigate to a virtual machine in the Web Client, and clickSymantec High Availability tab, the Symantec High Availability View displays healthinformation for the monitored application running on that virtual machine.

Similarly, if you navigate to an ESX cluster or datacenter, and click the tab, theSymantec High Availability Dashboard displays aggregate health information forall the monitored applications running in that cluster or datacenter.

You can perform application administration tasks from both the views. This includesstarting and stopping the monitored applications, among other tasks. For details,see the Symantec High Availability Solution Guide for VMware.

Note:While introducing support to the vSphere Web Client, Symantec continuesto support the vSphere Desktop Client via Symantec High Availability Console.Some VCS tasks are not yet supported via the vSphere Web Client. For details:See “vSphere Desktop Client support vs vSphere Web Client support” on page 20.

How the VMwareDisks agent communicates with the vCenter Serverinstead of the ESX/ESXi host

In addition to the ESX hosts the VMwareDisks agent can also communicate thedisk deatch and attach operations with the vCenter Server to which the virtualmachines belong.

In this scenario, in event of a failure, the VMwareDisks agent sends the disk detachand attach requests to the vCenter Server (instead of the ESX hosts). The vCenterServer then notifies the ESX host for these operations. Since the communicationis directed through the vCenter Server, the agent successfully detaches and attachesthe disks even if the ESX host and the virtual machines reside in a different network.

In a scenario where the host ESX/ESXi itself faults, the VMareDisks agent from thetarget virtual machine sends a request to the vCenter Server to detach the disksfrom the failed virtual machine. However, since the host ESX has faulted, the requestto detach the disks fails. The VMwareDisks agent from the target virtual machinenow sends the disk attach request. The vCenter Server then processes this requestand disks are attached to the target virtual machine. The application availability isthus not affected.

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LimitationThe configuration of VMwareDisks agent to communicate with the vCenter Serverhas the following limitation:

If VMHA is not enabled and the host ESX faults, then even after the disks areattached to the target virtual machine they remain attached to the failed virtualmachine. This issue occurs because the request to detach the disks fails since thehost ESX itself has faulted. The agent then sends the disk attach request to thevCenter Server and attaches the disks to the target virtual machine.

Even though the application availability is not impacted, the subsequent power ONof the faulted virtual machine fails. This issue occurs because of the stale linkbetween the virtual machine and the disks attached. Even though the disks arenow attached to the target virtual machine the stale link with the failed virtual machinestill exists.

WorkaroundAs a workaround, youmust manually detach the disks from the failed virtual machineand then power ON the machine.

About the vCenter Server user account privilegesYou must have the administrative privileges or must be a root user to communicatethe disk detach and attach operations through the vCenter Server. If the vCenterServer user account fails to have the administrative privileges or is not a root user,then the disk detach and attach operation may fail, in event of a failure.

If you do not want to use the administrator user account or the root user, then youmust create a role and add the following privileges to the created role:

■ "Low level file operations” on datastore

■ “Add existing disk” on virtual machine

■ “Change resource” on virtual machine

■ “Remove disk” on virtual machine

After you create a role and add the required privileges, you must add a local userto the created role. You can choose to add an existing user or create a new user.

Refer to the VMware product documentation for details on creating a role and addinga user to the created role.

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Getting started with vCenter-integrated Symantec High Availabilitysolution

This section describes the main steps to deploy the Symantec High Availabilitysolution in a VMware environment. You can administer Symantec High Availabilitysolutions over both vSphere Client (desktop) and vSphere Web client.

■ Geting started with vSphere Client support

■ Getting started with vSphere Web Client support

For more information on the difference between the operations supported via thevSphere Client and those supported via Vsphere Web client:

See “vSphere Desktop Client support vs vSphere Web Client support” on page 20.

For information on the steps you must perform for integration of ApplicationHAoperations with Veritas Operations Manager Management Server GUI:

Geting started with vSphere Client supportThe vSphere Client (desktop) support involves the installation and configuration ofthe Symantec High Availability Console, apart from the Symantec Cluster Server(VCS) and its agents.

The following figure represents the workflow for getting started with the SymantecHigh Availability solution and the corresponding document you must refer for details.

16Introducing the Symantec High Availability solution for VMwareHow the Symantec High Availability solution works in a VMware environment

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Getting started with vSphere Web Client supportThe vSphereWeb Client support involves the installation and configuration of VeritasOperations Manager Management Server and its Symantec HA Plug-in for VMware,apart from VCS and its agents.

The following figure represents the workflow for getting started with the SymantecHigh Availability solution and the corresponding document you must refer for details.

18Introducing the Symantec High Availability solution for VMwareHow the Symantec High Availability solution works in a VMware environment

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Install Veritas Operations ManagerManagement Server (VOM MS)

Optionally configure VOM MS in HA mode

Veritas Operations Manager Installation Guide

VOM User Guide and VOM Add-ons User Guide

Configure Application Monitoring

Application-specific Agent ConfigurationGuide or Generic Agent Guide

Using vSphere Web Client- Symantec High Availability View (virtual machine level)- Symantec High Availability Dashboard (VMware Cluster/Datacenter level)

Using a browser (virtual machine level)(https://<VMNameorIP>:5634/vcs/admin/application_health.html?priv=ADMIN)

Install Symantec HA Plug-in for vSphere Web clienton VOM MS

VOM User Guide and VOM MS Add-Ons User Guide

Register the Symantec HA Plug-in with vCenter Server

Install ApplicationHA guest components

Symantec High Availability Solution Guide for VMware

VOM MS Add-ons User Guide

Add ApplicationHA guests as managed hosts to VOM MS(and) Migrate guests from HA Console to VOM

VOM MS Add-ons User Guide

Monitor Application

Symantec High Availability Solution Guide for VMware

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For the latest updates on vSphereWeb Client support for ApplicationHA operations,see:

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH222796

vSphereDesktopClient support vs vSphereWebClient supportThere are certain differences in the vSphere Web Client support for SymantecCluster Server (VCS) and vSphere (desktop) Client support for VCS. A fewer numberof features/functionalities are presently supported over the vSphere Web Client.

Note: For the latest updates in the Symantec support for vSphere Web Client, seethe following tech note: http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH222796

The following table lists the current differences and similarities.

Table 1-1 Differences in vSphere Web Client support for VCS operations

vSphere Web ClientvSphere Desktop ClientTask

Supported via VeritasOperations Manager and itsadd-on, Symantec HA Plug-infor vSphere Web Client

Supported via Symantec HighAvailability Console

Integration with vSphereClient menu

SupportedSupportedSymantec High AvailabilityView for applicationmonitoring at a virtualmachine level

SupportedSupportedSymantec High AvailabilityDashboard for applicationmonitoring at adatacenter/ESX cluster level

Not SupportedSupportedInstalling ApplicationHA guestcomponents/VCS on virtualmachines from vSphereClient

Support for multiple vCenterServers via single VeritasOperations ManagerManagement Server

Support for only one vCenterServer per Symantec HighAvailability Console

Multiple vCenter support

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Table 1-1 Differences in vSphere Web Client support for VCS operations(continued)

vSphere Web ClientvSphere Desktop ClientTask

Not supported; Home pagenot supported

SupportedLicense management fromSymantec High Availabilitytab and Home page

Not supportedSupportedIntegration with VMware SiteRecovery Manager disasterrecovery solution

Getting started with the VOM-integrated Symantec High Availabilitysolution

The Symantec High Availability Solution operations can be integrated with VeritasOperations Manager Management Server (VOM MS) GUI by performing a fewsimple steps. The following figure lists the steps that you must perform to be ableto administer the Symantec High Availability solution via VOM MS GUI, and thedocuments that you may refer for further details.

Before you administer the solution over the VOM MS GUI, also read the followingsection:

See “About administering high availability with VOM” on page 23.

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About administering high availability with VOMThis document describes VMware vCenter-integrated steps to install, configure,and administer the Symantec High Availability solution. If you want to use the VeritasOperationsManager (VOM)-integratedmethods, youmust be familiar with SymantecStorage Foundation and High Availability (SFHA) or Symantec Cluster Server (VCS)concepts and procedures. You must also be familiar with Veritas OperationsManager (VOM) concepts and procedures. You can download SFHA,VCS, andVOM documentation from the SORT website:

You can perform the following configuration and administration steps from the VOMClient:

Note: You cannot use the VOM client to install VCS or SFHA on guest virtualmachines in a VMware environment. You can use the installer-based or othermethods. For details, see the product-specific installation guide.

■ Add virtual machines as managed hosts to VOM Management Server.

■ Organize managed hosts

■ Configure application monitoring

■ Monitor configured applications

■ Manage product licenses

■ Manage user access (Role-based access control)For details on roles and privileges that you must assign to the user on VOMManagement Server, see VOM documentation.

You cannot use the VOM client to administer the high availability of the virtualizationinfrastructure (ESX clusters) in a VMware environment. VMwareHA provides thehigh availabiity of ESX clusters.

Understanding Symantec High Availability terminologyTable 1-2 lists the technical terms, their abbreviated form, and synonyms used inthis document. The table also provides the equivalent terms used in the SymantecCluster Server and Symantec ApplicationHA documentation.

Based on context, the indicated synonyms have been used in the vCenter-integratedGUI, as well as in this document.

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Table 1-2 Terminology disambiguation chart

Symantec ApplicationHAdocumentation

Symantec Cluster Serverdocumentation

SymantecHighAvailabilitySolutions documentation

■ Guest■ Guest virtual machine

■ Node■ VCS Cluster Node■ Member

■ System (until it becomesa part of a VCS cluster)

■ VCS cluster system (onceit joins a cluster)

■ Failover target system(once it is included in thelist of failover targets foran application)

Not applicable■ Cluster■ VCS Cluster

■ Cluster■ VCS Cluster

■ ESX host■ ESX host■ ESX host

■ ESX cluster■ ESX cluster■ ESX cluster

■ Datacenter■ Datacenter■ Datacenter

■ Component group■ Service group■ Application■ Application instance■ Service Group

■ Application components■ Resources■ Application components

■ Guest components■ VCS■ Symantec High AvailabilityGuest Components

■ guest components■ VCS

■ Symantec High AvailabilityConsole

■ Console

■ Symantec High AvailabilityConsole

■ Console

■ Symantec High AvailabilityConsole

■ Console

■ Symantec High Availabilitytab

■ Symantec High Availabilitytab view

■ tab

■ Symantec High Availabilitytab

■ Symantec High Availabilitytab

■ Symantec High Availabilitytab view

■ tab

■ Symantec High AvailabilityDashboard

■ dashboard

■ Symantec High AvailabilityDashboard

■ dashboard

■ Symantec High AvailabilityDashboard

■ dashboard

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Table 1-2 Terminology disambiguation chart (continued)

Symantec ApplicationHAdocumentation

Symantec Cluster Serverdocumentation

SymantecHighAvailabilitySolutions documentation

Not applicable■ Service groupdependency

■ Application dependency

■ Component dependency■ Resource dependency■ Component dependency

Understanding operation namesTable 1-3 describes lists the names of VCS administrative operations/tasks thatyou can perform from the VMware vSphere Client GUI, as well as the equivalentoperation names used in Symantec Cluster Server documentation:

Table 1-3 Task disambiguation chart

VCS operationsvSphere Client GUI-based operations

Online Service GroupStart Application

Offline Service GroupStop Application

Switch ToSwitch

Add NodeAdd Failover System

Remove NodeRemove Failover System

Freeze Service GroupEnter Maintenance Mode

Unfreeze Service GroupExit Maintenance Mode

Clear FaultClear Fault State

FlushResolve a Held-up Operation

Delete Service GroupUnconfigure Application Monitoring

ProbeDetermine Application State

Propagate (option for online/offline SGs)Stop/Start dependent components in order

Persistent (option for freeze)Suspend application monitoring after reboot

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About setting up the Symantec High Availabilitysolution

Table 1-4 describes the tasks to set up the Symantec High Availability solution forvSphere Client support.

Note that this section does not list the tasks to set up the Symantec High Availabilitysolution for support via the vSphere Web Client or Veritas Operations ManagerManagement Server GUI.

To set up the Symantec High Availability solution for vSphere Web Client support:

See “Getting started with vCenter-integrated Symantec High Availability solution”on page 16.

For the latest updates on vSphereWeb Client support for Symantec High Availabilityproducts such as Symantec Cluster Server (VCS):

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH222796

To set up the Symantec High Availability solution for Veritas Operations ManagerManagement Server GUI support:

See “Getting started with the VOM-integrated Symantec High Availability solution”on page 21.

For detailed steps, see VOM documentation

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Table 1-4 Tasks for setting up Symantec High Availability in a VMwarevirtualization environment

DescriptionTask

Install theSymantec HighAvailabilityConsole

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Table 1-4 Tasks for setting up Symantec High Availability in a VMwarevirtualization environment (continued)

DescriptionTask

Note: Note that this task applies to only vSphere Client (desktop). Forinformation on vSphere Web Client support for VCS, see VOMdocumentation and the following tech note:

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH222796

Install the Symantec High Availability Console on a system identifiedto serve as a Console server. This installation registers the SymantecHigh Availability plugin on the vCenter Server.

For more details refer to the Symantec High Availability ConsoleInstallation and Upgrade Guide.

Note: If you are deploying VMware Site Recovery Manager and planto configure Symantec High Availability for application high availabilty,you must install the Console host at both, the protected site and therecovery site.

After the installation is complete, the Symantec High Availability tab,Symantec High Availability dashboard, and the Symantec HighAvailability home page are added to the vSphere client. The SymantecHigh Availability tab is visible when you select a virtual machine fromthe VMware vCenter Server inventory. The Symantec High Availabilitydashboard is visible when you select a VMware cluster or a datacenterfrom the VMware vCenter Server inventory. The Symantec HighAvailability home page is added as an vSphere Client extension underits Solutions and Applications pane.

Use the Symantec High Availability home page to perform any of thefollowing tasks:

■ Install guest components■ Manage licenses■ Configure SSO for disaster recovery

Use the Symantec High Availability tab to configure and controlapplication monitoring on virtual machines that are managed from theVMware vCenter Server. You can perform these operations per virtualmachine.

Use the Symantec High Availability dashboard to administer theconfigured applications on virtual machines in a VMwarecluster/datacenter. You can perform these operations at a VMwarecluster or datacenter level.

For details, refer to the Symantec High Availability Console Installation

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Table 1-4 Tasks for setting up Symantec High Availability in a VMwarevirtualization environment (continued)

DescriptionTask

and Upgrade Guide.

Install the Symantec High Availability guest components on all thesystems where you wish to configure the application for high availability.This installs the infrastructure, application, and replication agents andthe configuration wizards on the systems.

Note: Before you install the guest components, you must install theConsole.

Install SymantecHigh Availabilityguest components

Configure single sign-on between the system where you installed theguest components and the Console host.

Note: You need to manually configure SSO, if you have installed theguest components using the product installer or CLI. The GuestComponents installer launched using the vSphere Client menuconfigures SSO after the guest components installation is complete.

SSO provides secure communications between the system and theConsole. It uses digital certificates for permanent authentication anduses SSL to encrypt communications. The single sign-on authenticationis required for all VCS cluster operations on the system. It is alsorequired so that the vCenter server does not prompt you for a username and password each time you log on to the vSphere Client andclick on a system to view the application status.

Configure SSO

Configure the storage disks to save the application data.

See “Managing storage” on page 31.

Manage storage

Run the Symantec High Availability configuration wizard to configureapplication monitoring.

For details refer to the respective application configuration guide.

Configureapplicationmonitoring

Supported VMware versionsThe Symantec High Availability solution 6.2 supports the following VMware serversand management clients:

5.0 Patch 4 , 5.1, 5.5, and 5.5 Update 1VMware ESX/ESXi Server

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4.1 Update 3, 5.0, 5.0 Update 1a and 1b, 5.1, 5.5, and 5.5Update 1

Note: VMware Fault Tolerance is not supported.

VMware vCenter Server

4.1, 5.0, 5.0 Update 1a and 1b, 5.1, 5.5, and 5.5 Update 1VMware vSphere Client

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Deploying the SymantecHigh Availability solution

This chapter includes the following topics:

■ Managing storage

■ Installing the Symantec High Availability guest components

■ Upgrading Symantec High Availability guest components

■ Configuring single sign-on between the virtual machine and the Symantec HighAvailability Console

■ Managing the licenses for Symantec High Availability solution

Managing storageConfigure the storage disks to save the application data.

VMware virtualization manages the application data by storing it on SAN LUNs(RDM file), or creating virtual disks on a local or networked storage attached to theESX host using iSCSI, network, or Fibre Channel. The virtual disks reside on adatastore or a raw disk that exists on the storage disks used.

For more information, refer to the VMware documentation.

The application monitoring configuration in a VMware environment requires you touse the RDM or VMDK disk formats. During a failover, these disks can be deportedfrom a system and imported to another system.

Consider the following to manage the storage disks:

■ Use a networked storage and create virtual disks on the datastores that areaccessible to all the ESX servers that hosts the VCS cluster systems.

2Chapter

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■ In case of virtual disks, create non-shared virtual disks (Thick Provision LazyZeroed).

■ Add the virtual disks to the virtual machine on which you want to start theconfigured application.

■ Create either LVM logical volumes or VxVM volumes.

■ Mount the volumes on the mount point.

The following VCS storage agents are used to monitor the storage componentsinvolving non-shared storage:

■ If the storage is managed using LVM, the LVMVolumeGroup andLVMLogicalVolume agents are used.

■ If the storage is managed using VxVM, the DiskGroup and Volume agents areused.

Before configuring the storage, you can review the resource types and attributedefinitions of these VCS storage agents. For details refer to the Symantec ClusterServer Bundled Agents Reference Guide.

Installing the Symantec High Availability guestcomponents

To configure an application for high availability, you must install the Symantec HighAvailability guest components on the systems where you want to configure theapplication.

Note: Before you begin to install the guest components, ensure that you haveinstalled the Symantec High Availability Console on a system that is dedicated toserve as a Console Server.

For more details refer to the Symantec High Availability Console Installation andUpgrade Guide.

You can install the guest components in the following ways:

■ Using the product installerUse this method to install the guest components in physical or virtualenvironments.For more details refer to the product installation and upgrade guide for the guestcomponents you plan to install.

■ Using the command line interface (CLI)

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Use this method to install the guest components in physical or virtualenvironment.For more details refer to the product installation and upgrade guide for the guestcomponents you plan to install.

■ Using the VMware vSphere client integrated menuUse this method to install the guest components in a VMware environment only.See “About installing Symantec High Availability guest components using thevSphere Client menu” on page 34.

Note: Ensure that the systems where you plan to install the Symantec HighAvailability guest components, run one of the supported Linux operating systems.

Supported guest operating systemsTable 2-1 shows the supported operating systems for this release.

Table 2-1 Supported guest operating systems

LevelsOperating systems

Updates 3 and 4

Note: You cannot use the vSphere ClientGUI menu to install VCS binaries on systemsrunning OL 6. You must install the binariesfor OL6 by using the common product installer(CPI). For more information, see theSymantec Cluster Server Installation Guide.

Oracle Linux 6

Updates 3, 4, and 5Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

-Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7

SP2 and SP3SUSE Linux Enterprise 11

Note: 64-bit operating systems are only supported.

If your system is running a lower level of either Red Hat Enterprise Linux , SUSELinux Enterprise Server, or Oracle Linux, than indicated above, you must upgradeit before attempting to install VCS. Consult the Red Hat, SUSE, or Oracledocumentation for more information on upgrading or reinstalling your system.

Symantec supports only Oracle, Red Hat, and SUSE distributed kernel binaries.

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Symantec products operate on subsequent kernel and patch releases, providedthe operating systemsmaintain kernel ABI (application binary interface) compatibility.

About installing Symantec High Availability guest components usingthe vSphere Client menu

Installing the guest components using the vSphere Client menu involves the followingtasks:

■ To install the guest components on the systems running Linux operating system,copy the platform-specific guest installation package on to the Console host.See “Copying the platform-specific guest installation RPMs” on page 34.

■ Installing the guest components using the installation wizard.See “Installing the Symantec High Availability guest components” on page 32.See “Installing Symantec High Availability guest components using the vSphereClient menu” on page 35.

Note: To use CPI installer-based methods, such as automated installation usingresponse files, or manual installation using Linux commands and utilities, see theVCS Installation Guide.

Copying the platform-specific guest installation RPMsTo install the Symantec High Availability guest components on the virtual machinesrunning Linux operating system, ensure that the platform-specific Symantec HighAvailability guest components installation RPMS are available on the Console host.

Note: The VCS binaries for SLES and RHEL operating systems are stored onseparate DVDs. If you want to install VCS on both RHEL and SLES guests usingthe vSphere Client GUI, then you must copy the RPMs for one of the Linux flavorsonto the Console host. For example, if you install the Console using the VeritasProduct Installer or VPI (which is a command-line based product installer forSymantec Storage Foundationon and High availability products) from the RHELDVD, then the RHEL binaries are automatically copied to the Console host. Youmust later copy the SLES binaries by running the following command:CopyInstaller.bat <Source>. Where <Source> is the directory path where theSLES disc is mounted or copied.

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Perform the following to copy the platform-specific guest installation RPMs on theConsole host

1 Insert the product software disc for Linux operating system into your systemdrive.

2 Navigate to the following path:

cd <Installation_Path>\Veritas\ApplicationHA\Console\installer

For example:

cd C:\Program Files\Veritas\ApplicationHA\Console\installer

Where C:\ is the system drive

3 Run the Copyinstaller.bat file.

4 Enter the parameters in the following format.

CopyInstaller.bat <Source>

Where, <Source> is the directory path where the installer disc is mounted orcopied.

For example:

CopyInstaller.bat <D:>dvd1

CopyInstaller.bat <D:>dvd2-linux\rhel6_x86_64

CopyInstaller.bat <F:>dvd2-linux\sles11_x86_64

CopyInstaller.bat \\shared\dvd2-linux\win2k8_x86_64

This copies the platform-specific guest installation RPMs on the Console hostand enables you to install the guest components on the respective platformusing the vSphere Client menu.

Installing Symantec High Availability guest components using thevSphere Client menu

Consider the following points before you proceed with the installation.

■ You can use this option to install the following Symantec high availabilityproducts. You can use this option to install the products on multiple virtualmachines across ESX clusters and data centers registered with a VMwarevCenter Server.

■ Symantec ApplicationHA guest components

■ Symantec Cluster Server (VCS)

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■ Ensure that you have installed and enabled VMware Tools on the virtualmachines where you want to install the guest components. Ensure that theVMware Tools version is compatible with the ESX version in your environment.

■ The installer prompts for the user account details of the system where you wantto install the guest components. This user account must have the localadministrator privileges.

■ Installation of guest components using the vSphere Client GUI also configuressingle sign-on (SSO) between the virtual machine and the Console host.However, if the SSO configuration fails, you must manually configure it after theguest installation is complete. To manually configure SSO, in the Inventory view,click the virtual machine where you want to configure SSO, and then click theSymantec High Availability tab. Specify the user name and password of a useraccount with administrative or root privileges on the virtual machine.The single sign-on authentication is used for all operations on the virtual machine.This is also required so that the server does not prompt you for a user nameand password each time you log on to the vSphere Client and click on a virtualmachine to view its status.

■ Installation of guest components using the vSphere Client GUI ensures thatsupported VCS agents for this release are also automatically installed.

■ If the VOMManaged Host components of any version earlier to 6.0 are installedin your environment, then the guest components installer upgrades thesecomponents to its latest version.

Perform the following steps to install the Symantec High Availability guestcomponents on the virtual machines, through the vSphere Client menu

Note: Execute only those steps that are applicable to the guest operating system.

1 Using the vSphere Client, connect to the vCenter Server and navigate toHome> Solutions and Applications > Symantec High Availability. On the GettingStarted tab, click Install Guest Components

Alternatively,

Using the vSphere Client, connect to the vCenter Server and navigate toHome> Hosts and Clusters. From the vCenter inventory tree view, right-click onthe datacenter, cluster or any of the virtual machines, and select SymantecHigh Availability > Install Guest Components.

This launches the Symantec High Availability Guest Components Installer.

2 On the Welcome panel, review the prerequisites and then click Next.

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3 On the vCenter Server Details panel, specify the vCenter Server usercredentials and then click Next.

The wizard discovers only those virtual machines where the user has thepermissions.

The specified user must have the following privileges:

■ Symantec High Availability administrator privileges to perform the installationon the virtual machines.

■ vCenter privileges for "create tasks", "update tasks" and "acquire guestcontrol ticket" on the virtual machines.

4 On the Product Selection panel, select the product that you want to install.

The Packages included table lists the installation packages that are includedin the selected product.

Review the license agreement that is available against the correspondingpackage, select I accept the terms of license agreement and then clickNext.

A package is installed based on the operating system that runs on selectedsystems.

Note: If a required package is not displayed, you must copy that package tothe Console host and then run this wizard again.

See “Copying the platform-specific guest installation RPMs” on page 34.

5 On the System Selection panel, perform the following tasks:

■ Select the virtual machines on which you want to install the guestcomponents.

To select the virtual machines

■ Skip this sub-step if you launched the installation wizard by right-clickinga system in the inventory view of the vSphere Client GUI.Click Add.

■ On the Select Virtual Machines panel, select the desired virtualmachines, specify the required details and click OK.The specified details apply to all the selected virtual machines. If theyare different for one or more machines, you can edit them later.

■ If required, edit the user credentials and the license key details.If the user credentials and license key is different for an individual virtualmachine, you can edit the details inline.

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If the details to be edited are same for multiple virtual machines, select thedesired machines and click Edit. On the Edit Virtual Machine Detailspanel, enter the details that apply to the selected virtual machines and clickOK.

■ Click Install to begin the installation.The installer performs the required validation checks on the selected virtualmachines and moves to the Installation panel, if all the selected virtualmachines pass the validation checks.If the validation checks fail on any of the virtual machines, the status isreflected as follows:For virtual machines that pass the validation checks: Ready for install.For virtual machines that do not pass the validation checks: VerificationfailedTo view the cause of validation failure, select the virtual machine. The detailsare displayed in the Verification Details box.Rectify the issue and then click Install.The installer re-validates the failed virtual machines.The installer does not proceed with the installation unless all the selectedvirtual machines have passed the validation checks.

6 On the Installation panel, review the progress of the tasks queued. After all thetasks are queued and the status is marked as complete, click Finish.

This indicates that the selected virtual machines are queued for installation.

You can now view the installation progress under the Recent Tasks on vSphereClient.

After the installation is complete single sign-on is configured for the virtualmachines with the Symantec High Availability Console host. You can nowproceed to configure application monitoring, using the Symantec HighAvailability tab.

For details, refer to the individual application configuration guide.

Note: If the SSO configuration has failed for a virtual machine and you selectthat virtual machine from vSphere Client to configure application monitoringfor an application, then the Symantec High Availability tab first displays a panelto specify the virtual machine user credentials. This configures the singlesign-on for the virtual machine with the Symantec High Availability Consolehost. After you configure the single sign-on you can configure applicationmonitoring for an application running on the virtual machine.

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Upgrading Symantec High Availability guestcomponents

Upgrading Symantec High Availability guest components, involves upgradingSymantec Cluster Server (VCS) on the guests. If you have VCS already installedon the guests, you can upgrade to Release 6.1 using the vSphere Client GUI. Thesteps to upgrade and install are the same. For more information about the steps toinstall:

See “Installing the Symantec High Availability guest components” on page 32.

Note: Other upgrade methods, including installer-based upgrades, are alsosupported. For more details, see the VCS Installation Guide.

Configuring single sign-on between the virtualmachine and the Symantec High Availability Console

SSO configuration involves specifying the virtual machine administrator account toset up a permanent authentication for the virtual machine.

You need to manually configure SSO, if you have installed the guest componentsusing the product installer or CLI. The Guest Components installer launched usingthe vSphere Client menu configures SSO after the guest components installationis complete.

Use the Symantec High Availability tab to configure the single sign-on between thevirtual machine and the Console host.

Note: Symantec High Availability solution uses platform-based authentication; itdoes not store user passwords.

The Symantec High Availability Console uses the Authentication service to providesecure communications between the virtual machine and the Console. It uses digitalcertificates for authentication and uses SSL to encrypt communications.

This single sign-on authentication is required for all operations on the virtual machine.This is also required so that the server does not prompt you for a user name andpassword each time you log on to the vSphere Client and click on a virtual machineto view its status.

Perform the following steps to configure the single sign-on for the virtual machines.

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To configure single sign-on for the virtual machines

1 Launch the vSphere Client and connect to the vCenter Server used to manageyour virtual machines.

2 On the Security Warning dialog that displays information about the SymantecHigh Availability Console certificate, do the following:

■ Check the option to install the certificate.

■ Click Ignore.

If you do not install the Symantec High Availability Console certificate, thisdialog pops up each time you log on to the vCenter Server using the vSphereClient.

3 Open the Hosts and Clusters view in the vSphere Client and then expand theCluster to display the list of virtual machines.

4 From the left pane select the virtual machine to configure the SSO and thenin the right pane select the Symantec High Availability tab.

5 Click Yes on the security certificate related dialog box, if displayed.

6 In the User Name and Password field, specify the credentials of a user thathas administrative privileges on the virtual machine.

7 Click Configure.

The Symantec High Availability Console uses the specified user account toset up a permanent authentication for the virtual machine.

After the authentication is successful, the Symantec High Availability tabrefreshes and displays the application configuration view.

Note: If you experience an error, "Error occurred during deployment of theApplicationHA guest credential", you must repair the Console installation andthen try to configure the single sign-on again.

8 Repeat these steps for all virtual machines where you wish to configureapplication monitoring.

Managing the licenses for SymantecHighAvailabilitysolution

You can update the licenses by adding or removing specific license keys on thesystems where you have installed the Symantec High Availability guest components.

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Use any of the following methods to manage the licenses:

■ Connect to the vCenter Server and navigate to Home > Solutions andApplication > Symantec High Availability.Use this method to manage licenses for local and remote virtual machines.See “Managing the licenses through vSphere Client menu” on page 41.

■ To add a license, run the command vxlicinst, and specify the license key.

Managing the licenses through vSphere Client menuPerform the following steps to manage the licenses through vSphere Client menu.You can manage the licenses on local and remote virtual machines.

To manage the licenses

1 Connect to the vCenter Server and navigate to Home > Solutions andApplications > Symantec High Availability

2 Click the License Management tab.

3 Select the desired virtual machines and click Next.

Only the machines that are running can be selected.

4 Select a virtual machine and click Add License.

Use the CTRL key to select multiple virtual machines.

5 On the Add License panel, enter the license key in the New License Key textbox and click Validate Key.

The installer validates the license key. For successful validation the statusreflectsNew license applied. In case of validation failure, the status is reflectsValidation Failed. Enter a valid license key. Click Ok.

6 Click Apply.

The specified license keys take effect immediately.

To view the details of the existing licenses, select the individual virtual machine.The details are displayed in the Existing License Details table.

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Administering applicationavailability from thevSphere Client

This chapter includes the following topics:

■ Accessing the Symantec High Availability view

■ Administering application monitoring from the Symantec High Availability view

■ Administering application monitoring settings

■ Administering application availability using Symantec High Availability dashboard

Accessing the Symantec High Availability viewYou can use one of the following methods to access the Symantec High Availabilityview.

■ To access the view from the vSphere Client

■ To access the view from the vSphere Web Client

■ To access the view from a browser window

In the vSphere Client, if you have not configured single sign-on between theSymantec High Availability Console and selected a virtual machine, the view promptsyou to specify the user name and password of an administrative user on the selectedsystem. In the vSphere Web client, the prompt appears if single sign-on is notconfigured between Veritas Operations Manager Management Server and theselected system.

3Chapter

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If the system is not part of a VCS Cluster, the Configure a VCS Cluster linkappears.

If you have not configured application monitoring, the Configure an applicationfor high availability link appears.

To access the view from the vSphere Client

1 Launch the VMware vSphere Client and connect to the VMware vCenter Serverthat hosts the virtual machine.

2 From the Inventory view in the left pane, select the virtual the machine whereyou want to configure a VCS cluster and monitor an application.

3 In the right pane, click the Symantec High Availability tab.

The Symantec High Availability view appears.

To access the view from the vSphere Web Client

1 From the vSphere Web Client Home page, click the required vCenter Server.

2 Under Inventory trees, navigate to the required virtual machine.

3 In the Monitor tab, click Symantec High Availability.

The Symantec High Availability Health View for the selected virtual machineappears.

To access the view from a browser window

◆ Open a browser window and navigate to the following URL:

https://SysNameorIP:5634/vcs/admin/application_health.html

SysNameorIP is the system name or IP address of the system where you wantto configure application monitoring.

Administering application monitoring from theSymantec High Availability view

The Symantec High Availability view is a Web-based graphic user interface thatyou can use to administer application availability with Symantec Cluster Server(VCS).

You can launch the Symantec High Availability view from an Internet browser, byusing the following URL:

https://VirtualMachineNameorIP:5634/vcs/admin/application_health.html?priv=ADMINwhere VirtualMachineNameorIP is the system name or the IP address of the virtualmachine from where you want to access the tab.

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In a VMware virtual environment, you can embed the Symantec High Availabilityview as a tab in the vSphere Client menu (both the desktop and Web versions).

For details:

See “Accessing the Symantec High Availability view” on page 42.

Note: You can administer application monitoring in two ways. One, using theSymantec High Availability tab as described below, and two, using the SymantecHigh Availability dashboard. Using the Symantec High Availability dashboard, youcan administer application monitoring for multiple applications on multiple systemsin a data center or ESX cluster. For more information about the dashboard-basedoperations:

See “Administering application availability using Symantec High Availabilitydashboard” on page 65.

Use the Symantec High Availability view to perform the following tasks:

■ To configure a VCS cluster

■ To add a system to a VCS cluster

■ To configure and unconfigure application monitoring

■ To unconfigure the VCS cluster

■ To start and stop configured applications

■ To add and remove failover systems

■ To enter and exit maintenance mode

■ To switch an application

■ To determine the state of an application (components)

■ To clear Fault state

■ To resolve a held-up operation

■ To modify application monitoring settings

■ To view application dependency

■ To view component dependency

Understanding the Symantec High Availability viewThe Symantec High Availability view displays the consolidated health informationfor applications running in a Symantec Cluster Server (VCS) cluster. The clustermay include one or more systems.

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The Symantec High Availability tab displays application information for the entireVCS cluster, not just the local system.

Note: If the local system is not part of any VCS cluster, then the SymantecApplication High Availability view displays only the following link: Configure a VCScluster.

If you are yet to configure an application for monitoring in a cluster of which thelocal system is a member, then the Symantec Application High Availability viewdisplays only the following link: Configure an application for high availability.

The Symantec High Availability view uses icons, color coding, dependency graphs,and tool tips to report the detailed status of an application.

The Symantec High Availability view displays complex applications, in terms ofmultiple interdependent instances of that application. Such instances representcomponent groups (also known as service groups) of that application. Each servicegroup in turn includes several critical components (resources) of the application.

The following figure shows the Symantec High Availability view, with one instanceof Oracle Database and one instance of a generic application configured for highavailability in a two-node VCS cluster:

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2. Actions menu1. Title bar

4. Application dependency graph3. Aggregate Status Bar

6. Application-specific task menu5.Application table

7. Component dependency graph

The Symantec High Availability view includes the following parts:

■ Title bar: Displays the name of the VCS cluster, the Actions menu, the Refreshicon, the Alert icon. Note that the Alert icon appears only if the Symantec HighAvailability view fails to display a system, or displays stale data.

■ Actions menu: Includes a drop-down list of operations that you can perform witheffect across the cluster. These include: Configuring a cluster, Configuring anapplication for high availability; Unconfigure all applications; and UnconfigureVCS cluster.

■ Aggregate status bar: Displays a summary of applications running in the cluster.This includes the total number of applications, and a breakdown of the numberof applications in Online, Offline, Partial, and Faulted states.

■ Application dependency graph: Illustrates the order in which the applications orapplication instances, must start or stop.If an application must start first for another application to successfully start, theearlier application appears at a lower level in the graph. A line connects the twoapplications to indicate the dependency. If no such dependency exists, allapplications appear in a single horizontal line.

■ Application table: Displays a list of all applications configured in the VCS clusterthat is associated with the local system.Each application is listed in a separate row. Each row displays the systemswhere the application is configured for monitoring.The title bar of each row displays the following entities to identify the applicationor application instance (service group):

■ Display name of the application (for example, Payroll application)

■ Type of application (for example, Custom)

■ Service group name

■ Application-specific task menu: Appears in each application-specific row of theapplication table. The menu includes application-specific tasks such as Start,Stop, Switch, and a dropdown list of more tasks. TheMore dropdown list includestasks such as Add a failover system, and Remove a failover system.

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■ Component dependency graph: Illustrates the order in which applicationcomponents (resources) must start or stop for the related application orapplication instance to respectively start or stop. The component dependencygraph by default does not appear in the application table. To view the componentdependency graph for an application, you must click a system on which theapplication is running.The track pad, at the right-bottom corner helps you navigate through componentdependency graphs.If you do not want to view the component dependency graph, in the top leftcorner of the application row, click Close.

To view the status of configured applicationsIn the application dependency graph, click the application for which you want toview the status. If the appropriate row is not already visible, the application tableautomatically scrolls to the appropriate row. The row displays the state of theapplication for each configured failover system in the cluster for that application.

If you click any system in the row, a component dependency graph appears. Thegraph uses symbols, color code, and tool tips to display the health of each applicationcomponent. Roll the mouse over a system or component to see its health details.

The health of each application/application component on the selected system isdisplayed in terms of the following states:

Table 3-1 Application states

DescriptionState

Indicates that the configured application or application componentsare running on the virtual machine.

If the application is offline on at least one other failover system, analert appears next to the application name.

Online

Indicates that the configured application or its components are notrunning on the virtual machine.

Offline

Indicates that either the application or its components are beingstarted on the virtual machine or VCS was unable to start one ormore of the configured components

If the application is offline on at least one other failover system, analert appears next to the application name.

Partial

Indicates that the configured application or its components haveunexpectedly stopped running.

Faulted

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Configuring a cluster by using the VCS cluster configuration wizardPerform the following steps to configure a Symantec Cluster Server (VCS) clusterby using the VCS Cluster Configuration wizard.

To configure a VCS cluster

1 Launch the VCS Cluster Configuration wizard.

2 Review the information on the Welcome panel and click Next.

The Configuration Inputs panel appears.

The local system is by default selected as a cluster system.

3 If you do not want to add more systems to the cluster, skip this step.

To add a system to the cluster, click Add System.

4 In the Add System dialog box, specify the following details for the system thatyou want to add to the VCS cluster and click OK.

Specify the name or IP address of thesystem that you want to add to the VCScluster.

System Name or IP address

Specify the user account for the system.

Typically, this is the root user. The rootuser should have the necessary privileges.

User name

Specify the password for the user accountyou specified.

Password

Select this check box to use the specifieduser account on all the cluster systems thathave the same user name and password.

Use the specified user account on allsystems

5 On the Configuration Inputs panel, do one of the following actions:

■ To add another system to the cluster, click Add System and repeat step 4.

■ To modify the specified User name or Password for a cluster system, usethe edit icon.

■ Click Next

6 If you do not want to modify the security settings for the cluster, click Next, andproceed to step 8.

By default, the wizard configures single sign-on for secure clustercommunication. If you want to modify the security settings for the cluster, clickAdvanced Settings.

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7 In the Advanced settings dialog box, specify the following details and clickOK.

Select to configure single sign-on usingVCS Authentication Service for clustercommunication.

This option is enabled by default.

Use Single Sign-on

Select to configure a user withadministrative privileges to the cluster.

Specify the user name and password andclick OK.

Use VCS user privileges

8 On the Network Details panel, select the type of network protocol to configurethe VCS cluster network links (Low Latency Transport or LLT module), andthen specify the adapters for network communication.

The wizard configures the VCS cluster communication links using theseadapters. You must select a minimum of two adapters per cluster system.

Note: By default, the LLT links are configured over Ethernet.

Select Use MAC address for cluster communication (LLT over Ethernet)or select Use IP address for cluster communication (LLT over UDP), andspecify the following details for each cluster system.

■ To configure LLT over Ethernet, select the adapter for each networkcommunication link. You must select a different network adapter for eachcommunication link.

■ To configure LLT over UDP, select the type of IP protocol (IPv4 or IPv6),and then specify the required details for each communication link.

Select a network adapter for thecommunication links.

You must select a different networkadapter for each communication link.

Network Adapter

Displays the IP address.IP Address

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Specify a unique port number for eachlink.

For IPv4 and IPv6, the port range is from49152 to 65535.

A specified port for a link is used for allthe cluster systems on that link.

Port

Displays the subnet mask details.Subnet mask (IPv4)

Displays the prefix details.Prefix (IPv6)

By default, one of the links is configured as a low-priority link on a public networkinterface. The second link is configured as a high-priority link.

To change a high-priority link to a low-priority link, click Modify. In the Modifylow-priority link dialog box, select the link and click OK.

Note: Symantec recommends that you configure one of the links on a publicnetwork interface. You can assign the link on the public network interface asa low-priority link for minimal VCS cluster communication over the link.

9 On the Configuration Summary panel, specify a cluster name and unique clusterID and then click Validate.

Note: If multiple clusters exist in your network, the wizard validates if thespecified cluster ID is a unique cluster ID among all clusters accessible fromthe current system. Among clusters that are not accessible from the currentsystem, you must ensure that the cluster ID you specified is unique

10 Review the VCS Cluster Configuration Details and then click Next to proceedwith the configuration

11 On the Implementation panel, the wizard creates the VCS cluster.

The wizard displays the status of the configuration task. After the configurationis complete, click Next.

If the configuration task fails, click Diagnostic information to check the detailsof the failure. Rectify the cause of the failure and run the wizard again toconfigure the VCS cluster.

12 On the Finish panel, click Finish to complete the wizard workflow.

This completes the VCS cluster configuration.

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To configure or unconfigure application monitoringUse the Symantec High Availability view to configure or unconfigure an applicationfor monitoring in a cluster under Symantec Cluster Server (VCS) control.

The view provides you with specific links to perform the following configurationtasks:

■ Configure a VCS cluster:If the local system is not part of a VCS cluster, the Symantec High Availabilityview appears blank, except for the link Configure a VCS cluster.Before you can configure application monitoring, you must click the Configurea VCS cluster link to launch the VCS Cluster Configuration wizard. The wizardhelps you configure a VCS cluster, where the local system is by default a clustersystem.

■ Configure the first application for monitoring in a VCS cluster:If you have not configured any application for monitoring in the cluster, theSymantec High Availability view appears blank except for the link Configurean application for high availability.Click the link to launch the Symantec High Availability Configuration Wizard.Use the wizard to configure application monitoring.Also, in applications where the Symantec High Availability ConfigurationWizardis supported, for detailed wizard-based steps, see the application-specific VCSagent configuration guide. For custom applications, see the Symantec ClusterServer Generic Application Agent Configuration Guide.

■ Add a system to the VCS cluster:ClickActions >Add a System to VCSCluster to add a system to a VCS clusterwhere the local system is a cluster member. Adding a system to the cluster doesnot automatically add the system as a failover system for any configuredapplication. To add a system as a failover system, see (add a cross-referenceto 'To add or remove a failover system'.

■ Configure an application or add an application to the existing applicationmonitoring configuration:Click Actions > Configure an application for high availability to launch theSymantec High Availability Application Monitoring Configuration Wizard. Usethe wizard to configure application monitoring.

■ Unconfigure monitoring of an application:In the appropriate row of the application table, click More > UnconfigureApplication Monitoring to delete the application monitoring configuration fromthe VCS.Note that this step does not remove VCS from the system or the cluster, thisstep only removes the monitoring configuration for that application.

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Also, to unconfigure monitoring for an application, you can perform one of thefollowing procedures: unconfigure monitoring of all applications, or unconfigureVCS cluster.

■ Unconfigure monitoring of all applications:ClickActions >Unconfigure all applications. This step deletes the monitoringconfiguration for all applications configured in the cluster.

■ Unconfigure VCS cluster:Click Actions > Unconfigure VCS cluster. This step stops the VCS cluster,removes VCS cluster configuration, and unconfigures application monitoring.

Adding a system to a VCS clusterPerform the following steps to add a system to a Symantec Cluster Server (VCS)cluster by using the VCS Cluster Configuration wizard.

The system from where you launch the wizard must be part of the cluster to whichyou want to add a new system.

To add a system to a VCS cluster

1 Access the Symantec High Availability view (for any system belonging therequired cluster).

2 Click Actions > Add System to VCS Cluster.

The VCS Cluster Configuration Wizard is launched.

3 Review the information on the Welcome panel and click Next.

The Configuration Inputs panel appears, along with the cluster name, and atable of existing cluster systems.

4 To add a system to the cluster, click Add System.

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5 In the Add System dialog box, specify the following details for the system thatyou want to add to the VCS cluster and click OK.

Specify the name or IP address of thesystem that you want to add to the VCScluster.

System Name or IP address

Specify the user account for the system.

Typically, this is the root user. The rootuser should have the necessary privileges.

User name

Specify the password for the user accountyou specified.

Password

Select this check box to use the specifieduser account on all the cluster systems thathave the same user name and password.

Use the specified user account on allsystems

6 On the Configuration Inputs panel, do one of the following actions:

■ To add another system to the cluster, click Add System and repeat step5.

■ To modify the User name or Password for a cluster system, use the editicon.

■ Click Next

7 On the Network Details panel, specify the adapters for network communication(Low Latency Transport or LLT module of VCS) for the system. The wizardconfigures the VCS cluster communication links using these adapters. Youmust select a minimum of two adapters.

Note: You cannot modify the existing type of cluster communication (LLT overEthernet or LLT over UDP).

■ If the existing cluster uses LLT over Ethernet, select the adapter for eachnetwork communication link. You must select a different network adapterfor each communication link.

■ If the existing cluster uses LLT over UDP, select the type of IP protocol(IPv4 or IPv6), and then specify the required details for each communicationlink.

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Select a network adapter for thecommunication links.

You must select a different networkadapter for each communication link.

Network Adapter

Displays the IP address.IP Address

Specify a unique port number for eachlink.

For IPv4 and IPv6, the port range is from49152 to 65535.

A specified port for a link is used for allthe cluster systems on that link.

Port

Displays the subnet mask details.Subnet mask (IPv4)

Displays the prefix details.Prefix (IPv6)

By default, one of the links is configured as a low-priority link on a public networkinterface. The other link is configured as a high-priority link.

To change a high-priority link to a low-priority link, click Modify. In the Modifylow-priority link dialog box, select the link and click OK.

Note: Symantec recommends that you configure one of the links on a publicnetwork interface. You can assign the link on the public network interface asa low-priority link for minimal VCS cluster communication over the link.

8 On the Configuration Summary panel, review the VCS Cluster ConfigurationDetails.

9 On the Implementation panel, the wizard creates the VCS cluster.

The wizard displays the status of the configuration task. After the configurationis complete, click Next.

If the configuration task fails, click Diagnostic information to check the detailsof the failure. Rectify the cause of the failure and run the wizard again to addthe required system to the VCS cluster.

10 On the Finish panel, click Finish to complete the wizard workflow.

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To start or stop applicationsUse the following options on the Symantec High Availability view to control thestatus of the configured application and the associated components or componentgroups (application instances).

Note that the Start and Stop links are dimmed in the following cases:

■ If you have not configured any associated components or component groups(resources or service groups) for monitoring

■ If the application is in maintenance mode

■ If no system exists in the cluster, where the application is not already started orstopped as required.

To start an application

1 In the appropriate row of the application table, click Start.

2 If the application (service group) is of the failover type, on the Start Applicationpanel, click Any system. VCS uses pre-defined policies to decide the systemwhere to start the application.

If the application (service group) is of the parallel type, on the Start Applicationpanel, click All systems. VCS starts the application on all required systems,where the service group is configured.

Note: Based on service group type, either the Any system or the All Systemslink automatically appears.

To learn more about policies, and parallel and failover service groups, see theSymantec Cluster Server Administrator's Guide.

If you want to specify the system where you want to start the application, clickUser selected system, and then click the appropriate system.

3 If the application that you want to start requires other applications or componentgroups (service groups) to start in a specific order, then check the Start thedependent components in order check box, and then click OK.

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To stop an application

1 In the appropriate row of the application table, click Stop.

2 If the application (service group) is of the failover type, in the Stop ApplicationPanel, click Any system. VCS selects the appropriate system to stop theapplication.

If the application (service group) is of the parallel type, in the Stop ApplicationPanel click All systems. VCS stops the application on all configured systems.

Note: Based on service group type, either the Any system or the All Systemslink automatically appears.

To learn more about parallel and failover service groups, see the SymantecCluster Server Administrator's Guide.

If you want to specify the system where you want to stop the application, clickUser selected system, and then click the appropriate system.

3 If the application that you want to stop requires other applications or componentgroups (service groups) to stop in a specific order, then check the Stop thedependent components in order check box, and then click OK.

To switch an application to another systemIf you want to gracefully stop an application on one system and start it on anothersystem in the same cluster, you must use the Switch link. You can switch theapplication only to a system where it is not running.

Note that the Switch link is dimmed in the following cases:

■ If you have not configured any application components for monitoring

■ If you have not specified any failover system for the selected application

■ If the application is in maintenance mode

■ If no system exists in the cluster, where the application can be switched

■ If the application is not in online/partial state on even a single system in thecluster

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To switch an application

1 In the appropriate row of the application table, click Switch.

2 If you want VCS to decide to which system the application must switch, basedon policies, then in the Switch Application panel, click Any system, and thenclick OK.

To learn more about policies, see the Symantec Cluster Server Administrator'sGuide.

If you want to specify the system where you want to switch the application,click User selected system, and then click the appropriate system, and thenclick OK.

VCS stops the application on the system where the application is running, andstarts it on the system you specified.

To add or remove a failover systemEach row in the application table displays the status of an application on systemsthat are part of a VCS cluster. The displayed system/s either form a single-systemSymantec Cluster Server (VCS) cluster with application restart configured as ahigh-availability measure, or a multi-system VCS cluster with application failoverconfigured. In the displayed cluster, you can add a new system as a failover systemfor the configured application.

The system must fulfill the following conditions:

■ The system is not part of any other VCS cluster.

■ The system has at least two network adapters.

■ The host name of the system must be resolvable through the DNS server or,locally, using /etc/hosts file entries.

■ The required ports are not blocked by a firewall.

■ The application is installed identically on all the systems, including the proposednew system.

To add a failover system, perform the following steps:

Note: The following procedure describes generic steps to add a failover system.The wizard automatically populates values for initially configured systems in somefields. These values are not editable.

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To add a failover system

1 In the appropriate row of the application table, click More > Add FailoverSystem.

2 Review the instructions on the welcome page of the Symantec High AvailabilityConfiguration Wizard, and click Next.

3 If you want to add a system from the Cluster systems list to the Applicationfailover targets list, on the Configuration Inputs panel, select the system in theCluster systems list. Use the Edit icon to specify an administrative user accounton the system. You can then move the required system from the Cluster systemlist to the Application failover targets list. Use the up and down arrow keys toset the order of systems in which VCS agent must failover applications.

If you want to specify a failover system that is not an existing cluster node, onthe Configuration Inputs panel, click Add System, and in the Add Systemdialog box, specify the following details:

Specify the name or IP address of the system that you wantto add to the VCS cluster.

System Name or IPaddress

Specify the user name with administrative privileges on thesystem.

If you want to specify the same user account on all systemsthat you want to add, check the Use the specified useraccount on all systems box.

User name

Specify the password for the account you specified.Password

Click this check box to use the specified user credentialson all the cluster systems.

Use the specified useraccount on all systems

The wizard validates the details, and the system then appears in the Applicationfailover target list.

4 If you are adding a failover system from the existing VCS cluster, the NetworkDetails panel does not appear.

If you are adding a new failover system to the existing cluster, on the NetworkDetails panel, review the networking parameters used by existing failoversystems. Appropriately modify the following parameters for the new failoversystem.

Note: The wizard automatically populates the networking protocol (UDP orEthernet) used by the existing failover systems for Low Latency Transportcommunication. You cannot modify these settings.

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■ To configure links over ethernet, select the adapter for each networkcommunication link. You must select a different network adapter for eachcommunication link.

■ To configure links over UDP, specify the required details for eachcommunication link.

Select a network adapter for the communication links.

You must select a different network adapter for eachcommunication link.

Symantec recommends that one of the network adaptersmust be a public adapter and the VCS cluster communicationlink using this adapter is assigned a low priority.

Note: Do not select the teamed network adapter or theindependently listed adapters that are a part of teamed NIC.

Network Adapter

Select the IP address to be used for cluster communicationover the specified UDP port.

IP Address

Specify a unique port number for each link. You can useports in the range 49152 to 65535.

The specified port for a link is used for all the cluster systemson that link.

Port

Displays the subnet mask to which the specified IP belongs.Subnet mask

5 If a virtual IP is not configured as part of your application monitoringconfiguration, the Virtual Network Details page is not displayed. Else, on theVirtual Network Details panel, review the following networking parameters thatthe failover system must use, and specify the NIC:

Specifies a unique virtual IP address.Virtual IP address

Specifies the subnet mask to which the IP address belongs.Subnet mask

For each newly added system, specify the network adaptor thatmust host the specified virtual IP.

NIC

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6 If the newly added failover system is associated with a different ESX host ascompared to other systems, then on Target ESX Details page, specify the ESXhost of the newly added failover system. Also specify the administrative useraccount details associated with the ESX host.

Note: If the application for which you are adding a failover system does notuse storage attached directly to the ESX host, the wizard does not display thispage.

If the new failover system runs on a different ESX host, or is configured tofailover to another ESX host, specify that ESX host. To specify the ESX host,click Add ESX Host and on the Add ESX Host dialogue box, specify thefollowing details, and then click Next:

Specify the target ESX hostname or IP address. The virtualmachines can fail over to this ESX host during vMotion.

Specify an ESX host that has the same mount points as thosecurrently used by the application.

ESX hostname or IPaddress

Specify a user account for the ESX host. The user account musthave administrator privileges on the specified ESX host.

User name

Specify the password associated with the user name youspecified.

Password

The wizard validates the user account and the storage details on the specifiedESX host, and uses this account to move data disks during vMotion.

7 On the Configuration Summary panel, review the VCS cluster configurationsummary, and then click Next to proceed with the configuration.

8 On the Implementation panel, the wizard adds the specified system to the VCScluster, if it is not already a part. It then adds the system to the list of failovertargets. The wizard displays a progress report of each task.

■ If the wizard displays an error, click View Logs to review the errordescription, troubleshoot the error, and re-run the wizard from the SymantecHigh Availability view.

■ Click Next.

9 On the Finish panel, click Finish. This completes the procedure for adding afailover system. You can view the system in the appropriate row of theapplication table.

Similarly you can also remove a system from the list of application failover targets.

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Note: You cannot remove a failover system if an application is online or partiallyonline on the system.

To remove a failover system

1 In the appropriate row of the application table, click More > Remove FailoverSystem.

2 On the Remove Failover System panel, click the system that you want toremove from the monitoring configuration, and then click OK.

Note:This procedure only removes the system from the list of failover target systems,not from the VCS cluster. To remove a system from the cluster, use VCS commands.For details, see the VCS Administrator's Guide.

To suspend or resume application monitoringAfter configuring application monitoring you may want to perform routinemaintenance tasks on those applications. These tasks may or may not involvestopping the application but may temporarily affect the state of the applications andits dependent components. If there is any change to the application status, VeritasCluster Server (VCS) may try to restore the application state. This may potentiallyaffect the maintenance tasks that you intend to perform on those applications.

If stopping the application is not an option, you can suspend application monitoringand create a window for performing such maintenance tasks. When applicationmonitoring is suspended, VCS freezes the application configuration.

The Enter Maintenance Mode link is automatically dimmed if the application isalready in maintenance mode. Conversely, if the application is not in maintenancemode, the Exit Maintenance Mode link is dimmed.

The Symantec High Availability tab provides the following options:

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To enter maintenance mode

1 In the appropriate row, click More> Enter Maintenance Mode.

During the time the monitoring is suspended, Symantec high availabilitysolutions do not monitor the state of the application and its dependentcomponents. The Symantec High Availability view does not display the currentstatus of the application. If there is any failure in the application or itscomponents, VCS takes no action.

2 While in maintenance mode, if a virtual machine restarts, if you want applicationmonitoring to remain in maintenance mode, then in the Enter MaintenanceMode panel, check the Suspend the application availability even afterreboot check box, and then click OK to enter maintenance mode.

To exit the maintenance mode

1 In the appropriate row, click More> Exit Maintenance Mode, and then clickOK to exit maintenance mode.

2 Click the Refresh icon in the top right corner of the Symantec High Availabilityview, to confirm that the application is no longer in maintenance mode.

To clear Fault stateWhen you fix an application fault on a system, you must further clear the applicationFaulted state on that system. Unless you clear the Faulted state, VCS cannot failoverthe application on that system.

You can use the Symantec High Availability view to clear this faulted state at thelevel of a configured application component (resource).

The Clear Fault link is automatically dimmed if there is no faulted system in thecluster.

To clear Fault state

1 In the appropriate row of the application table, click More > Clear Fault state.

2 In the Clear Fault State panel, click the system where you want to clear theFaulted status of a component, and then click OK.

To resolve a held-up operationWhen you try to start or stop an application, in some cases, the start or stopoperation may get held-up mid course. This may be due to VCS detecting anincorrect internal state of an application component. You can resolve this issue byusing the resolve a held-up operation link. When you click the link, VCS appropriatelyresets the internal state of any held-up application component. This process prepares

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the ground for you to retry the original start or stop operation, or initiate anotheroperation.

To resolve a held-up operation

1 In the appropriate row of the application table, clickMore >Resolve a held-upoperation.

2 In the Resolve a held-up operation panel, click the system where you want toresolve the held-up operation, and then click OK.

To determine application stateThe Symantec High Availability view displays the consolidated health informationof all applications configured for monitoring in a VCS cluster. The application healthinformation is automatically refreshed every 60 seconds.

If you do not want to wait for the automatic refresh, you can instantaneouslydetermine the state of an application by performing the following steps:

To determine application state

1 In the appropriate row of the Application table, click More > DetermineApplication State.

2 In the Determine Application State panel, select a system and then click OK.

Note: You can also select multiple systems, and then click OK.

To remove all monitoring configurationsTo discontinue all existing application monitoring in a VCS cluster, perform thefollowing step:

■ On the Symantec High Availability view, in the Title bar, click Actions >Unconfigure all applications. When a confirmation message appears, clickOK.

To remove VCS cluster configurationsIf you want to create a different VCS cluster, say with new systems, a different LLTprotocol, or secure communication mode, you may want to remove existing VCScluster configurations. To remove VCS cluster configurations, perform the followingsteps:

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Note: The following steps deletes all cluster configurations, (including networkingand storage configurations), as well as application-monitoring configurations.

■ On the Title bar of the Symantec High Availability view, click Actions>Unconfigure VCS cluster.

■ In the Unconfigure VCS Cluster panel, review the Cluster Name and Cluster ID,and specify the User name and Password of the Cluster administrator, and thenclick OK.

Administering application monitoring settingsThe Symantec High Availability view lets you define andmodify settings that controlapplication monitoring with Symantec Cluster Server (VCS). You can define thesettings on a per application basis. The settings apply to all systems in a VCScluster, where that particular application is configured for monitoring.

The following settings are available:

■ App.StartStopTimeout: When you click the Start Application or StopApplication, or Switch Application links in the Symantec High Availabilityview, VCS initiates an application start or stop, respectively. This option definesthe number of seconds that VCS must wait for the application to start or stop,after initiating the operation. You can set a value between 0 and 300 secondsfor this attribute; the default value is 30 seconds.If the application does not respond in the stipulated time, the tab displays analert. The alert states that the operation may take some more time to completeand that you must check the status after some time. A delay in the applicationresponse does not indicate that the application or its dependent component hasfaulted. Parameters such as workload, system performance, and networkbandwidth may affect the application response. VCS continues to wait for theapplication response even after the timeout interval elapses.If the application fails to start or stop, VCS takes the necessary action dependingon the other configured remedial actions.

■ App.RestartAttempts: This setting defines the number of times that VCS musttry to restart a failed application. The value of App.RestartAttempts may varybetween 0 and 5; the default value is 0. If an application fails to start within thespecified number of attempts, VCS fails over the application to a configuredfailover system.

■ App.DisplayName: This setting lets you specify an easy-to-use display namefor a configured application. For example, Payroll Application. VCSmay internallyuse a different application name to uniquely identify the application. However,the internal string, for example OraSG2, may not be intuitive to understand, or

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easy to recognize while navigating the application table in the Symantec HighAvailability view.Moreover, once configured, you cannot edit the application name, while youcan modify the application display name as required. Note that the SymantecHigh Availability view displays both the application display name and theapplication name.

Administering application availability usingSymantecHigh Availability dashboard

The Symantec High Availability Dashboard is a consolidated graphic user interfacethat lets you administer application monitoring on systems in a VMwarevCenter-administered data center.

The dashboard is fully integrated with the VMware vSphere Client GUI. Thedashboard appears in the Symantec High Availability tab of the VMware vSphereClient GUI. To view the dashboard, select a data center or an ESX cluster in theinventory, and then click the Symantec High Availability tab.

Note: To administer application availability using the dashboard, single sign-onbetween the system and Symantec High Availability Console must be configured.Also, the application-specific agent must be appropriately configured.

For more information, see theSymantec High Availability Solution Guide for VMware.

On the dashboard, you can view the aggregate health statistics for monitoredapplications across a data center. You can also drill down to an ESX cluster andview monitored applications running in that cluster.

To understand how to navigate across the dashboard:

See “Understanding the dashboard work area” on page 66.

You can drill down to an individual application and perform the followingadministrative actions:

■ Start application

■ Stop application

■ Enter maintenance mode

■ Exit maintenance mode

■ Switch application (to another system)

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Apart from applications on systems running Symantec Cluster Server, the SymantecHigh Availability Dashboard also displays applications running on SymantecApplicationHA guests (versions 6.0 and 5.1 SP2).

For more information onmonitoring applications running on Symantec ApplicationHAguests:

See “Monitoring applications running on Symantec ApplicationHA guests”on page 71.

Understanding the dashboard work areaThe Symantec High Availability dashboard displays the aggregate application healthstatus information for a datacenter or an ESX cluster.

Depending on whether you click a datacenter or a VMware cluster in the inventoryview (left pane) of the VMware vSphere Client GUI, the dashboard displays theaggregate application status information. Apart from the application table describedin detail below, the dashboard uses color code and tool tips to indicate the statusof an application.

The following figure illustrates the dashboard work area. Note that the red boxeshighlight the key GUI elements:

In the above figure, the labels stand for the following elements of the dashboard

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Taskbar3ESX cluster/host table2Aggregate status bar1

Systems table(dropdown)

6Application table5Filters menu4

Aggregate status barThe aggregate status bar of the dashboard displays the following details:

■ Number of ESX clusters that have applications configured for monitoring withVCS

■ Number of configured applications in the selected data center

■ Number of faulted applications

■ Number of applications in partial state

■ Number of online applications

■ Number of offline applications

ESX cluster/host tableThe Symantec High Availability dashboard displays this table only if you click adatacenter in the inventory view of the vSphere Client, and then click the SymantecHigh Availability tab.

The cluster table lists the following statistics per ESX cluster (or independent ESXhost) in the data center:

■ Number of configured applications

■ Number of faulted applications

■ Number of applications in partial state

■ Number of online applications

■ Number of offline applications

■ Overall status (percentage of healthy applications)

If you click a row in the ESX cluster/host table, the application table of the dashboarddisplays monitored applications running on systems hosted by the selected ESXcluster or ESX host (an ESX server that is not part of an ESX cluster).

Note:This is the only method to navigate to applications running on systems hostedby standalone ESX hosts, by using the Symantec High Availability dashboard.

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TaskbarThe taskbar displays icons for various administrative tasks. A tool tip highlights thetask that each icon represents.

The dashboard supports the following tasks:

■ Start Application: Starts a configured application

■ Stop Application: Stops a configured application

■ Enter Maintenance Mode: Suspends application monitoring of the configuredapplication. In maintenance mode, VCS does not monitor the state of theapplication, and its dependent components.

■ Exit Maintenance Mode: Resumes application monitoring for a configuredapplication.

■ Switch Application: Switches and an application gracefully from one system toanother.

Filters menuThe filters menu lets you dynamically filter the applications that are displayed in theapplications table. You can filter the applications by the following parameters:

■ Application name

■ Application status

■ Search (by a string)

Application tableIf you click an ESX cluster in the ESX cluster/host table, or in the inventory view ofthe VMware vSphere Client, then the list of applications running in that ESX clusterappears in the application table of the dashboard.

If you click an ESX host (an ESX server that is not part of an ESX cluster) in theESX cluster/host table, then the list of applications that are configured on systemshosted by that ESX server appears. Note that this is the only route to navigate tosuch applications through the dashboard

The following table lists each column in the application table and its description:

DescriptionColumn

Indicates the application name.Applications

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DescriptionColumn

Indicates the group of critical application components that VCS usesto determine the health of a monitored application. Service group isa VCS term. The equivalent term in Symantec ApplicationHAterminology is “component group”.

VCS may use more than one service group to monitor a complexapplication. The dashboard displays each service group of such anapplication as a separate instance of that application.

Service Groups

This column indicates the effective status of an application in a VCScluster. It does not indicate the state of the application on per membersystem. For example, in a two-system cluster, if the application hasfaulted on one system but has failed over to another system, thenthis column states the state of the application as Online.

Indicates one of the following states of an application:

■ Online■ Offline■ Faulted■ Partial

Note: After you perform an administrative task such as starting orstopping an application, or entering or exiting maintenance mode, ittakes a few seconds for the dashboard to reflect the revised statusof the configured application.

Status

Indicates the number of systems where the application is configuredfor monitoring. To view more information about all such systems,click the (…) icon. The System table (dropdown) appears, listing theESX host name of each configured system, the VM name (systemname), and the status of the application on each system.

Systems

Displays a triangular alert icon (!) and describes the reason for thealert. This column displays alerts in two cases: a) If the applicationstatus record is stale; b) If the application has faulted on a system.

For stale records, the column includes the timestamp of the lastreceived health record. In case of application fault, the columnprovides details of the system where the fault occurred.

Alerts and description

Accessing the dashboardYou can use the Symantec High Availability dashboard to perform one of thefollowing actions:

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■ Identify all instances and failover systems of one or more applications runningin a data center

■ Drill down to a specific application, and perform an administrative action on theapplication

■ View alerts for faulted applications and stale application health reports

Prerequisites for accessing the dashboardBefore you access the Symantec High Availability dashboard to administer anapplication, ensure:

■ Single sign-on is configured between the Symantec High Availability Consoleand the systems hosting the monitored applications

■ Symantec High Availability Console is able to communicate with Symantec HighAvailability guest components on designated port (port 5634).

■ The application that you want to administer is configured for applicationmonitoring with Symantec High Availability

How to access the dashboardWhen you install Symantec High Availability guest components, the productinstallation script or wizard automatically installs the required dashboard components.As a result, the Symantec High Availability Dashboard appears in the SymantecHigh Availability tab of the vSphere Client.

You must, however, ensure that Symantec High Availability is successfully installedand that you have adequate user privileges to access the dashboard.

To access dashboard

Perform the following step:

■ In the inventory view (left pane) of the vSphere Client, click a datacenter or aVMware cluster. In the right pane, to view the Symantec High Availabilitydashboard, click the Symantec High Availability tab.

Who can access the dashboardTo access High Availability dashboard, the VMware vCenter administrator mustassign one the following roles to you:

■ Guest: View application state

■ Operator: View application state and perform administrative actions

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■ Admin: View application state and perform administrative actions. You can alsoconfigure application availability monitoring in this role, but not from thedashboard.

For more information on roles and privileges:

See “About the roles and privileges assigned in vCenter” on page 77.

Monitoring applications across a data centerIf you click a data center in the inventory view of the VMware vSphere Client, andthen click the Symantec High Availability tab, the dashboard appears, displayingthe aggregate health information of applications running inside various ESX clusters.

You can use filters to drill down from all applications running across the data centerand view a single application and its various instances in the data center.

Monitoring applications across an ESX clusterIf you click an ESX cluster in the inventory view of the VMware vSphere Client, andthen click the tab, the dashboard displays the consolidated information on thesystems and applications running in the ESX cluster. The dashboard also displaysthe application health and application monitoring information.

You can use filters to drill down from all applications running in the ESX cluster, toview a single application and its various instances in the ESX cluster.

Monitoring applications running on Symantec ApplicationHA guestsSymantec High Availability dashboard displays applications running on SymantecApplicationHA guests as well as those running on Symantec Cluster Server systems.The dashboard presents a unified view of monitored applications on the two typesof systems in a data center.

For easy application monitoring, the dashboard displays an application-centric view,not a product-centric view. You cannot therefore always determine which applicationis under the control of which Symantec High Availability product.

However, you can conclude that applications configured for failover are under VCScontrol. Applications configured for monitoring without a failover system may eitherbe under VCS control or under ApplicationHA control.

Searching for application instances by using filtersThe High Availability dashboard lets you search for all instances of a particularapplication in the selected datacenter or an ESX cluster. Various filters enable to

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search for the application that you want to monitor. You can use multiple filterssimultaneously to search for an application.

The following table lists each field in the filter menu and its description:

DescriptionField

Lets you specify the name of the application that you want to filter in theapplication table. A drop-down list displays all the applications that areconfigured in the datacenter or ESX cluster. Click to select the name ofthe application that you want to filter.

Application

Lets you specify the status of the application by which you want to filterthe application table. A drop-down list displays the following status values:Online, Offline, Faulted, and Partial.

Status

Lets you search for an application by using a string or pattern ofcharacters. Enter the string using which you want to filter applications.As you enter the string in the Search box, the dashboard dynamicallyfilters the applications.

Note: The dashboard searches for the specified string in the Systemscolumn.

Search

Selecting multiple applications for batch operationsYou can select one or more instances of an application for administering by usingthe dashboard as follows:

■ To select one application instance, click inside the row of that applicationinstance.

■ To select various instances, keep the Control key pressed and then click insidethe row of each instance.

■ To select a batch of consecutive entries in the application table, keep the Shiftkey pressed, click inside the row of the first instance, and then click inside therow of the last instance. Alternatively, you can keep the Shift key pressed anddrag the mouse to mark a block of consecutive entries.

■ To select all instances in the application table, click Select All.

Starting an application using the dashboardTo start an application, perform the following steps in the application table of thedashboard.

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To start an application

1 Filter the applications that you want to start.

See “Searching for application instances by using filters” on page 71.

The application table displays all the instances of the filtered applications.

2 If required, select multiple applications or instances to perform a batchoperation.

See “Selecting multiple applications for batch operations” on page 72.

3 To start the application, in the taskbar, click the appropriate icon (use the tooltip to recognize the appropriate icon).

4 In the Start Application panel, click the systems where you want to start theapplication. Note that you can start the application on any of the systemsdisplayed for each application.

Click OK.

Stopping an application by using the dashboardTo stop an application on one or more virtual machines, perform the following stepsin the application table of the High Availability dashboard.

To stop an application

1 Filter the applications that you want to stop.

See “Searching for application instances by using filters” on page 71.

The application table displays all the instances of the filtered applications.

2 If required, select multiple applications or instances to perform a batchoperation.

See “Selecting multiple applications for batch operations” on page 72.

3 To stop the application, in the taskbar, click the appropriate icon (use the tooltip to recognize the appropriate icon).

4 In the Stop Application panel, from the dropdown list, click the systems whereyou want to stop the application.

Click OK.

Entering an application into maintenance modeYou may need to intentionally take an application offline for maintenance purposes,without triggering a corrective response from Symantec Cluster Server (VCS).

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To enter an application into maintenance mode, perform the following steps in theapplication table of the High Availability dashboard.

Note: The maintenance mode configuration is application-specific, notsystem-specific.

To enter maintenance mode

1 Filter the application that you want to gracefully take offline for maintenance.

See “Searching for application instances by using filters” on page 71.

The application table displays all the instances of the filtered applications.

2 If required, select multiple applications or instances to perform a batchoperation.

See “Selecting multiple applications for batch operations” on page 72.

3 To enter maintenance mode, in the taskbar, click the appropriate icon forentering maintenance mode (use the tool tip to recognize the appropriate icon).

4 If a system restarts while the application is in maintenance mode, and you wantthe application to remain in maintenance mode, then in the Enter MaintenanceMode panel, check the Suspend the application availability even afterreboot.

5 On the Enter Maintenance Mode panel, click OK.

Bringing an application out of maintenance modeTo bring an application out of maintenance mode on one or more systems, performthe following steps in the application table of the High Availability dashboard.

To exit maintenance mode

1 Filter the applications that you want to bring out of maintenance mode.

See “Searching for application instances by using filters” on page 71.

The application table displays all the instances of the filtered applications.

2 If required, select multiple applications or instances to bring out of maintenancemode.

See “Selecting multiple applications for batch operations” on page 72.

3 To bring the applications out of maintenance mode, in the taskbar, click theappropriate icon for exiting maintenance mode (use the tool tip to recognizethe appropriate icon).

4 In the Exit Maintenance Mode panel, click OK.

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Switching an applicationTo gracefully switch an application from one system to another, perform the followingsteps in the application table of the dashboard.

Note: You can switch an application only if the application monitoring configurationincludes one or more failover systems.

To switch an application

1 Filter the applications that you want to switch to another node.

See “Searching for application instances by using filters” on page 71.

The application table displays all the instances of the filtered applications.

2 If required, select multiple applications or instances to perform a batchoperation.

See “Selecting multiple applications for batch operations” on page 72.

3 To switch the applications, in the taskbar, click the appropriate icon (use thetool tip to recognize the appropriate icon).

4 In the Switch Application panel, select the systems where you want to switchthe applications, and then click OK. Symantec Cluster Server takes theapplications offline on the existing systems, and brings them online on thesystems that you specified.

Resolving dashboard alertsThe Alerts and Description column in the application table of the High Availabilitydashboard marks application alerts with the alert (!) icon. This occurs in the followingcases:

■ Stale entries: Stale entries occur either due to a system (virtual machine) issuesor connectivity issues. When this occurs, the system fails to send applicationheartbeats to the dashboard. If the system fails to send the heartbeat for twoconsecutive heartbeat intervals, the dashboard displays the alert icon.

Note: You can filter stale entries using the Search option and searching withthe string "stale".

■ Application faults: Application faults may occur due to reasons beyond SymantecCluster Server (VCS) control, such as storage failure. In such cases, you mustinvestigate and appropriately resolve the issue, and then clear the Faulted status

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of the application. To view only application fault alerts, in the Alerts andDescription column, click the Hide Old Entries check box.

Note: It is important that you fix application faults, and then clear the Fault status.Else, the VCS cannot fail over applications to the faulted system, and applicationavailability may be compromised. For more information, See “To clear Faultstate” on page 62.

Deleting stale recordsVCS uses a heartbeat mechanism to monitor the health of a configured application.If a system fails to send two consecutive heartbeats for an application, VCS marksthe health status of that application as stale. The Alerts and Description column ofthe High Availability Dashboard indicates the time elapsed since the last valid healthstatus was recorded.

After troubleshooting the heartbeat failure, you can delete such stale records fromthe High Availability database.

To delete stale records

1 On the Console host, navigate to the home directory.

For example:

C:\Program Files\Veritas\

Where C:\ is the system drive.

2 Run the following command:

C:\Program Files\Veritas\VRTSsfmh\bin>perl.exe C:\Program

Files\Veritas\ApplicationHA

\bin\delete_stale_records.pl<TimeInterval>

Where Time Interval, in minutes, indicates how stale the records must be, forthem to be deleted. By default, the script deletes all records that are older than60 minutes

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Roles and privileges

This appendix includes the following topics:

■ About the roles and privileges assigned in vCenter

■ Assigning customized privileges to VMwareDisks agent

About the roles and privileges assigned in vCenterThe following set of privileges are available after you install the Symantec HighAvailability Console. These privileges define the operations that a user can performon the system. You can create roles and then assign privileges to them or assignprivileges to the existing roles that are available in the vSphere environment.Application monitoring operations are enabled or disabled depending on theprivileges that are assigned to the vCenter user account. For example, the Adminprivilege is required for configuring application monitoring on a system.

vCenter Server administrators can use these privileges to configure access controlwhile monitoring an application.

■ View Application State (Guest)Can view the application status on the system. The Guest cannot perform anyapplication monitoring operations.

■ Control Application Availability (Operator)Can perform all the operations that include start and stop configured applications,enable and disable application monitoring, specify the application monitoringconfiguration settings, enter and exit application maintenance mode, and viewthe application status.The Operator cannot configure or unconfigure application monitoring on thesystem.

■ Configure Application Availability (Admin)

AAppendix

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Can perform all operations that include configure and unconfigure applicationmonitoring, start and stop configured applications, enable and disable applicationmonitoring, specify the application monitoring configuration settings, enter andexit application maintenance mode, and view application status.

Assigning customized privileges to VMwareDisksagent

This section describes a procedure exclusively for users who want to assigncustomized privileges to the VMwareDisks agent on an ESX host, instead ofadministrative or root user privileges. If you want to assign administrative or rootuser privileges, skip this section.

The following subsections describe the background and the configuration workflowin detail.

■ About assigning privileges to VMwareDisks agent

■ Creating a role with customized privileges for VMwareDisks agent

■ Creating an ESX user account

■ Integrating an ESX user account with Active Directory

■ Assigning a role to an ESX user account

About assigning privileges to VMwareDisks agentThe application monitoring configuration for Symantec Cluster Server (VCS) agentsin a VMware virtual environment involves the VMwareDisks agent. In the event ofan application failure, the VMwareDisks agent sends a disk-detach request to theESX host, and then attaches the disk to the failover target system.

To enable the VMwareDisks agent to communicate with the ESX host, during theapplication monitoring configuration workflow, you must specify an ESX useraccount. The specified ESX user account must have administrative privileges, orshould be a root user. If the ESX user account does not have these privileges, youmust create a role, add certain privileges to the created role, and then assign therole to the ESX user account.

If you do not want to assign the role to an existing ESX user account, you can createa new ESX user account, and then assign the role. You can further integrate thenew ESX user account with an Active Directory-based authentication service ifavailable in the VMware environment. The VMwareDisks agent can then use thesame user account to perform its tasks on all ESX hosts linked to the ActiveDirectory.

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Creating a role with customized privileges for VMwareDisks agentThis section provides the steps to create a role with adequate privileges that theVMwareDisks agent can use in an ESX cluster. The assigned privileges do notinclude administrative or root user privileges:

To create a role

1 Using the VMware vSphere Client, log on to the ESX host, and navigate toHome > Administration > Roles.

2 Click Add Role.

3 On the Add New Role panel, specify a name for the new role. For example,"VMwareDisks Resources Manager".

4 To select privileges for the VMwareDisks Resources Manager role, in thePrivileges tree, click the following check boxes.

■ All Privileges > Datastore > Low level file operations.

■ All Privileges > Virtual Machine > Configuration > Adding existingdisk.

■ All Privileges > Virtual Machine > Change resource.

■ All Privileges > Virtual Machine > Configuration > Remove disk.

5 Click OK.

Creating an ESX user accountIf you want to assign the role that you created in the section Creating a role withcustomized privileges for VMwareDisks agent, to an existing user, skip this section.Proceed to the section Assigning a role to an ESX user account.

If you want to create a new user account to assign the new role to, perform thesteps described in this section:

To add a local ESX user

1 Using the VMware vSphere Client, log on to the ESX host, and navigate toHome > Inventory.

2 In the left pane, click the ESX host and in the right pane, click Local Users &Groups.

The Users list appears by default.

3 If the Users list is not displayed, to view the Users list, on the View bar, clickUsers.

4 To add a new user, right-click any existing user, and click Add.

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5 In the Add New User panel, specify a Login and Password to define a newuser account for configuring VMwareDisks resources.

To confirm the password, retype the password.

To define the new user account, you can also specify a descriptive User Nameand user ID (UID). If you do not specify the UID, the vCenter serverautomatically assigns one.

6 Click OK.

Integrating an ESX user account with Active DirectoryAfter you create a new ESX user account for the VMwareDisks agent tocommunicate with an ESX host, you can optionally integrate the account with anyexisting Active Directory authentication in your environment. Else, the new ESXuser account depends on the local authentication mechanism on the ESX host, andyou will need to configure one account per host.

Integrating with an existing Active Directory mechanism helps you leverage thesame ESX user account across multiple ESX hosts for VMwareDisks agentconfigurations.

To integrate with Active Directory

1 Create a domain user in the Active Directory.

2 Using the VMware vSphere Client, log on to the ESX host, and navigate toHome > Inventory.

3 In the left pane, click the ESX host and in the right pane, click Configuration.

4 In the Software panel, click Authentication Services.

5 Review the Directory Services Configuration.

If the Directory Service Type is not Active Directory, in the top right corner,click Properties.

6 In the Directory Service Configuration panel, from the Select Directory ServiceType drop down list, select Active Directory.

7 In the Domain Settings area, specify the Domain, and click Join Domain.

Alternatively, configure vSphere Authentication proxy.

8 Enter the user name and password of a directory service user that haspermissions to join the host to the domain, and click OK.

Assigning a role to an ESX user accountThis section describes the steps to assign a role to an ESX user:

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To assign the role to a user

1 Using the VMware vSphere Client, log on to the ESX host, and navigate toHome > Inventory.

2 In the left pane, click the ESX host and in the right pane, click Permissions.

3 In the Permissions tab, right-click the blank space, and click Add Permission.

4 In the Assign Permissions panel, click Add.

5 In the Users and Groups frame of the Select Users and Groups panel, specifythe user(s) that you want to assign the new role for storage management (forexample, VMwareDisks Resources Manager).

Press the Ctrl key and click to select multiple users, if required, and then clickAdd and click OK.

6 In the Assigned Role drop down list, click the new role (for example,VMwareDisks Resources Manager), and then click OK.

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Guest componentinstallation parameters

This appendix includes the following topics:

■ Symantec High Availability guest components installation parameters

Symantec High Availability guest componentsinstallation parameters

This section provides the list of tunable parameters while installing the guestcomponents (VCS), using the vCenter integrated menu.

These parameters are listed in the "appServerConfig.properties" file that is locatedon the Console host at the following location:

C:\ProgramData\Symantec\ApplicationHA\conf\appServerConfig.properties

Note: After you edit the parameter values, you must restart the Symantec HighAvailability service.

Table B-1 lists the guest components parameters for which you can customize thedefault values.

Table B-1 Guest components tunable parameters

DescriptionParameter

Determines the number of virtual machines on which theguest installer package is simultaneously copied.

Default value= 4

VIIMaxInstallerThreadCount

BAppendix

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Table B-1 Guest components tunable parameters (continued)

DescriptionParameter

Determines the time interval for polling the installationprogress on the virtual machine.

Default value = 15 minutes.

VIIPollingInterval

Determines the time span for which a virtual machine isqueued for installation.

Default= 120 minutes.

If the virtual machine is queued for installation for more thanthe time period specified in the attribute, a timeout erroroccurs and the virtual machine is removed from theinstallation queue.

VIIQueueTimeout

Determines the time span for copying the guest installerpackage to the virtual machine, from the Console host.

Default= 45 mins

If the time taken to copy the installer package exceeds thetime specified in the attribute, a time out error occurs andthe installation is aborted.

VIICopyTimeout

Determines the time taken to complete the guest installation.

Default= 45 mins

If the time taken for installation exceeds the time specifiedin the attribute, a time out error occurs and the installationis aborted.

VIIGuestInstallTimeout

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Troubleshooting

This appendix includes the following topics:

■ Agent logging on virtual machine

■ Troubleshooting Symantec High Availability guest components installation andSSO configuration issues

■ Troubleshooting wizard-based configuration issues

■ Troubleshooting dashboard issues

■ Troubleshooting issues with the Symantec High Availability view

Agent logging on virtual machineSymantec High Availability agents generate log files that are appended by letters.Letter A indicates the first log file, B the second, C the third, and so on.

The agent log components are defined as follows:

■ Timestamp: the date and time the message was generated.

■ Mnemonic: the string ID that represents the product (for example, VCS).

■ Severity: levels include CRITICAL, ERROR, WARNING, NOTICE, and INFO(most to least severe, respectively).

■ UMI: a unique message ID.

■ Message Text: the actual message generated by the agent.

The agent logs are located in the following location:

/var/VRTSvcs/log/<agentname>_A.log

The format of the agent log is as follows:

CAppendix

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Timestamp (Year/MM/DD) | Mnemonic | Severity | UMI | Agent Type |

Resource Name | Entry point | Message text

A typical agent log resembles:

2012/08/15 13:34:44 VCS ERROR V-16-2-13067 Thread(4146068336) Agent

is calling clean for resource(MQ1) because the resource became OFFLINE

unexpectedly, on its own.

Troubleshooting Symantec High Availability guestcomponents installationandSSOconfiguration issues

This section lists the common troubleshooting scenarios that you may encounterwhile or after installing the Symantec High Availability guest components andconfiguring single sign-on.

Restarting the vCenter Server or its service during the SymantecHigh Availability guest components installation displays "Error" invSphere Client tasks

If the vCenter Server or its service happen to fail or restart during the VCSinstallation, the vSphere Client displays "Error" as the installation status. However,the guest components installation may continue on the virtual machines.

Workaround: After the vCenter Server or its service restarts, click on each of theselected virtual machine and verify if the Symantec High Availability tab appearsin the vSphere Client.

Presence of the Symantec High Availability tab indicates successful installationof the guest components. However, if the Symantec High Availability tab is notpresent, refer to the Symantec High Availability logs for installation details.

The Symantec High Availability logs are located on the virtual machine at thefollowing locations:

■ /opt/INSTALLER/vii_logs

■ /opt/INSTALLER/vii_logs_backup

■ /opt/VRTS/install/logs

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Reverting the system snapshot requires you to cancel the SymantecHigh Availability guest components installation

If you revert the virtual machine snapshot during the Symantec High Availabilityguest components installation, the vSphere Client continues to show a stale entryof the installation task and displays the error "There is one entry in Queue for thevirtual machine", if you initiate the installation again.

Workaround: Before initiating the installation again, run the following utility to cancelthe installation task from the vSphere Client.

https://SymantecHighAvailabilityConsole_IP:14152/ac/

CancelGuestInstallation?

VmId=VirtualMachine_ID

&VmUser=UserName&VmPassword=Password

Alternatively,

https://Console_IP:14152/ac/CancelGuestInstallation?

VmId=VirtualMachine_ID&VmUser=UserName&VmPassword=Password

Where, the virtual machine user name and password must be the one specifiedduring the guest installation.

Note: You can also use this utility if you plan to cancel the queued installation taskor to cancel the installation tasks that held-up in the same state for a long time.

Reversal to snapshot leads to an IP resource faultIf you capture a VM configuration snapshot while an IP resource is online, and laterrevert to the snapshot, VCS reports the state of the IP resource as faulted.

When you revert to a virtual machine configuration snapshot , the networkconnections undergo a restart. The virtual IP plumbed on the virtual machine isunplumbed. As a result, if you have configured the IP resource for monitoring withVCS, then VCS reports the IP resource as faulted. (2879258)

Workaround: Before capturing the VM configuration snapshot, set the value of theApp.RestartLimit attribute for the IP resource to 1.

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Perform the following steps

1 Make the VM configuration file editable:

# haconf -makerw

2 Set the value of the App.RestartLimit attribute to 1:

# hatype -modify IP RestartLimit 1

3 Save the change and make the VM configuration file read-only:

# haconf -dump -makero

SSO configuration failureThe single sign-on configuration might fail if you are installing the Symantec HighAvailability guest components on two or more systems simultaneously and one ofthem is the Console host.

Workaround: Manually configure the single sign-on, using the Symantec HighAvailability tab on the vCenter Server.

Issues due to disruption of SSO configurationYou may experience the following issues if the SSO configuration between theguest systems and the Console host breaks:

■ The guest system may fail to appear in the Symantec Availability Dashboard

■ The Symantec Availability Dashboard may display stale entries and applicationstatus

■ The Symantec High Availability tab prompts for administrator user accountdetails

The SSO configuration breaks if you have changed the Console server IP addressafter the SSO was configured.

Workaround: Reconfigure SSO for each cluster system.

Powering on a suspended system leads to an IP resource faultIf you suspend a system, and then power on the system , VCS reports the state ofthe IP resource as faulted.

When you power on a suspended virtual machine, the network connections undergoa restart. The virtual IP plumbed on the virtual machine is unplumbed. As a result,

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if you have configured the IP resource for monitoring with VCS, then VCS reportsthe IP resource as faulted. (2927874)

Workaround: Set the value of the App.RestartLimit attribute for the IP resource to1 using the following steps

Perform the following steps

1 Make the VM configuration file editable:

# haconf -makerw

2 Set the value of the App.RestartLimit attribute to 1:

# hatype -modify IP RestartLimit 1

3 Save the change and make the VM configuration file read-only:

# haconf -dump -makero

Troubleshooting wizard-based configuration issuesThis section lists common troubleshooting issues that you may encounter duringor after the steps related to the VCSCluster ConfigurationWizard and the SymantecHigh Availability Configuration Wizard.

Symantec High Availability Configuration Wizard displays blankpanels

The Symantec High Availability Configuration Wizard may fail to display the wizardpanels. The window may appear blank.

Verify that the Symantec ApplicationHA Service is running on the Symantec HighAvailability Console host and then launch the wizard again.

Symantec High Availability Configuration wizard displays the"hadiscover is not recognized as an internal or external command"error

While configuring applicationmonitoring the Symantec High Availability Configurationwizard may display the "hadiscover is not recognized as an internal or externalcommand" error, after you click Next on the Application Selection panel.

This issue occurs if you launch the wizard from a system where you have reinstalledVCS.

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Workaround:

Exit the wizard, restart the Veritas Storage Foundation Messaging Service and thenre-run the wizard.

Running the 'hastop -all' command detaches virtual disksThe hastop –all command takes offline all the components and componentsgroups of a configured application, and then stops the VCS cluster. In the process,the command detaches the virtual disks from the VCS cluster nodes. (2920101)

Workaround: If you want to stop the VCS cluster (and not the applications runningon cluster nodes), instead of the “hastop –all”, use the following command:

hastop -all -force

This command stops the cluster without affecting the virtual disks attached to theVCS cluster nodes.

Validation may fail when you add a failover systemOn the Configuration Inputs panel, when you add a failover system using the AddSystem option, you may see the following error message:

Validation has failed for <System Name>.

Workaround: Verify the following:

■ The Symantec High Availability guest components are installed on the system.

■ The operating system running on the system is supported by this product.

■ The specified system name or IP address is valid and the system is switchedon and accessible over the network.

■ The firewall settings allow access on port 5634 used by the Storage FoundationMessaging Service.

■ If xprtld daemon is running on the system, restarting the xprtld service mayresolve the issue.

Adding a failover system may fail if you configure a cluster withcommunication links over UDP

When you configure a cluster with communication links over UDP and add a failoversystem, you may see the following error message:

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The same network adapter is specified for one or more links on the

system. You must select a different network adapter for each

communication link.

This issue occurs when you unplumb an IP address from one of the configuredcommunication links. In this scenario, VCS may also go into jeopardy.

Workaround:

Plumb the IP address again.

Troubleshooting dashboard issuesThis section lists common troubleshooting scenarios that you may encounter whenusing the Symantec High Availability Dashboard:

A system does not appear on the dashboardThis behavior may occur if one MAC address is plumbed on more than one virtualsystems in the data center. In such cases, the dashboard is able to resolveapplication health reports from only one system, using the MAC address. Thedashboard does not display the other system/s with the same MAC address.(2863755)

Workaround: Ensure that no two virtual systems in the data center have the sameMAC address.

Task-specific panels launched from dashboard, do not displaydescription for alerts

When you perform administrative tasks such as starting or stopping an applicationusing the Symantec High Availability Dashboard, a task-specific panel appears. Inthe panel, you can specify the system where you want to perform the administrativetask. For some the configured systems listed in the panel, an alert icon appears.However, no description for the reason of the alert is displayed.

The alert icon (!) typically appears when a system reports a stale application healthrecord, or an application fault. Without known such information about the alert, itmay be difficult to select the appropriate system for the administrative task.(2919069)

Workaround

Navigate to the appropriate row in the Application table of dashboard. Alert details,such as time stamp of the stale record, are displayed in the Alerts and Descriptioncolumn.

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Reporting on the DashboardThe Dashboard may not report one or more configured failover systems. This canhappen:

■ If one or more failover systems have MAC addresses that are already in use byother virtual machines in the same datacenter.Workaround: Ensure that the cluster systems have unique MAC addresses.

■ If one or more cluster systems have not established single sign-on (SSO) withSymantec High Availability Console.Workaround: Perform the following steps:

■ a) In the Inventory view of the vSphere Client GUI, navigate to the requiredvirtual machine.

■ Click the Symantec High Availability tab.

■ Enter the username and password of the virtual machine to configure SSOwith the Symantec High Availability Console.

Troubleshooting issues with the Symantec HighAvailability view

This section lists common troubleshooting scenarios that you may encounter whenusing the Symantec High Availability view.

Symantec high availability view is not visible from a cluster systemThe Symantec High Availability view displays the cluster view (consolidatedcluster-level health information of the configured application/s running on the selectedsystem). In some multi-node clusters, the view is not visible from at least one ofthe cluster system.

This behavior occurs if connectivity of the configured LLT links fail. This may be anetworking error. (2863649)

Workaround

Ensure that valid LLT links are configured for the affected cluster system, and thenretry.

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Symantec High Availability view does not display the applicationmonitoring status

The Symantec High Availability view may either display a HTTP 404 Not Founderror or may not show the application health status at all.

Verify the following conditions and then refresh the Symantec High Availability view:

■ Verify that the Symantec High Availability Console host is running and isaccessible over the network.

■ Verify that the VMware Web Service is running on the vCenter Server.

■ Verify that the VMware Tools Service is running on the guest virtual machine.

■ Verify that the Veritas Storage Foundation Messaging Service (xprtld process)is running on the Symantec High Availability Console and the virtual machine.If it is stopped, type the following on the command prompt:net start xprtld

■ Verify that ports 14152, 14153, and 5634 are not blocked by a firewall.

■ Log out of the vSphere Client and then login again. Then, verify that theSymantec High Availability plugin is installed and enabled.

Symantec High Availability viewmay freeze due to special charactersin application display name

For a monitored application, if you specify a display name that contains specialcharacters, one or both of the following symptoms may occur:

■ The Symantec high availability view may freeze

■ The Symantec high availability vie may display an Adobe exception errormessageBased on your browser settings, the Adobe exception message may or may notappear. However, in both cases the tab may freeze. (2923079)Workaround:Reset the display name using only those characters that belong to the followinglist:

■ any alphanumeric character

■ space

■ underscoreUse the following command to reset the display name:hagrp -modify sg name UserAssoc -update Name "modified display

name without special characters"

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If the Console host abruptly restarts, the high availability view maydisappear

If the system that hosts the Symantec High Availability Console abruptly restarts,then the registration of the Symantec High Availability plugin with the VMwarevCenter Server does not persist.

As a result, the Symantec High Availability vew does not appear on the vSphereClient GUI. (2919549)

Workaround:

Repair the Console installation.

In the Symantec High Availability view, the Add Failover System linkis dimmed

If the system that hosts the Symantec High Availability Console abruptly restarts,then the registration of the Symantec High Availability plugin with the VMwarevCenter Server does not persist.

As a result, the Symantec High Availability tab does not appear on the vSphereClient GUI. (2919549)

Workaround:

Repair the Console installation.

Symantec high availability view may fail to load or refreshThe Symantec High Availability view displays health information of monitoredapplications in a VCS cluster. The tab display may fail to load. It may alternativelyfail to refresh itself after the default interval of 60 seconds. (2932028)

Workaround:

Restarting the xprtld service may resolve the issue.

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To restart the xprtld service

1 Stop the xprtld service:

# /etc/init.d/xprtld stop

2 Ensure that xprtld is stopped:

# ps -ef | grep xprtld

If the services is not stopped, terminate the process:

# kill -9 xprtld_pid_value

Where pid is the process ID of the xprtld process.

3 Start xprtld service:

# /etc/init.d/xprtld start

An alert icon appears in the Symantec High Availability viewAn Alert icon appears in the title bar of the Symantec High Availability view of thevSphere Client GUI only if the communication between Symantec High AvailabilityConsole and a failover system fails. As a result, the Symantec High Availabilitydashboard fails to display the system, or displays stale application health data forthe system.

Workaround:

Perform the following steps

1 Configure single sign-on between the Symantec High Availability Console hostand the system.

For information on configuring single sign-on, see theSymantec High AvailabilityConsole Installation and Upgrade Guide.

2 Bring the VCSInfraSG group online:

# hagrp -online VCSInfraSG -any

Operating system commands to unmount resource may failIf a user configures a mount point as component (resource) while configuring highavailability for an application, then unconfiguring the application from the SymantecHigh Availability view may lock the mount point. Operating system commands tounmounts the resource may fail. (3574657)

Workaround

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Ensure that you stop the application before you unconfigure the application byclicking More > Unconfigure Application Monitoring in the Symantec HighAvailability view.

Symantec High Availability View displays health information forincorrect virtual machine

This may be an issue with the Internet Explorer cache, not Symantec High Availabilityproducts. This issue occurs when you have both Symantec ApplicationHA andSymantec Cluster Server (VCS) installed on separate guests in your virtualenvironment.

For example, if you use Internet Explorer to first access the Symantec HighAvailability view for an ApplicationHA guest, and then access the view for the VCSguest, the browser may continue to display application health information relatedto the ApplicationHA guest.

Conversely, if you first access the view for a VCS guest, and then access the viewfor an ApplicationHA guest, the application health information for the VCS guestmay continue to appear. (3573921)

Workaround

Clear the browser cache and retry.

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