vCenter HA failover does not start services set to manual

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• When a vCenter vCenter HA fail-over occurs services set to Manual do not restart automatically.
• The services can be started manually without error.

 

Environment

VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.5.x

Cause

This is by design as vMon will honor the start-up type of the service when orchestrating the service start-up during a vCenter HA fail-over.

 

The startup type for services is replicated between vCenter HA Nodes. The running state of a service is not taken into account when a fail-over occurs. Services with the startup type Manual will not automatically start on the node after a fail-over completes.

 

For example, if the vmware-updatemgr is set to Manual (Automatic by default) it will also be set to Manual on the Passive node and therefore will not start automatically after a fail-over event.

Resolution

To ensure all running services are started during a vCenter HA fail-over, set the start-up type of the services to Automatic.

 

For more information on controlling the start-up type of vCenter Server services refer to Edit the Startup Settings of a Service section of the Using the vSphere Web Client to Configure the vCenter Server Appliance guide.

 

Notes:

• VMware does not recommend modifying the start-up type of any services that by default are set to Automatic as these will be required for normal vCenter Server operations.
• Some services default to Manual and include:
  • VMware vSphere Authentication Proxy
  • VMware vSphere ESXi Dump Collector
  • Auto Deploy and ImageBuilder

These services should have their start-up type modified to Automatic if they are in use in the environment.