If you can plan ahead when to shut down and start up a VMware Cloud Director appliance cluster, for example, when a planned data center maintenance occurs, you can perform an orderly shutdown and startup of the whole cluster.

Perform an Orderly Shutdown of a VMware Cloud Director Appliance Cluster

You must follow specific steps when shutting down a whole VMware Cloud Director cluster.

Prerequisites

When shutting down a cluster running VMware Cloud Director 10.1 or later, if the automatic failover in case of a primary database service failure is activated, change the failover mode to Manual. After the startup of the cluster, you can set the failover mode to Automatic. See Automatic Failover of the VMware Cloud Director Appliance.

Procedure

  1. Log in directly or by using an SSH client to the OS of each VMware Cloud Director appliance cell as root.
  2. On each of the cells in the cluster, shut down the VMware Cloud Director service. 
    /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/cell-management-tool -u admin_username cell --shutdown
  3. Using the vSphere Client UI, run an orderly shutdown of the guest OS on each application cell.
    1. Select a cell and right-click it.
    2. Select Power > Shut Down Guest OS.
  4. Repeat step 3 on each standby cell.
  5. Repeat step 3 on the primary cell.

Perform an Orderly Startup of a VMware Cloud Director Appliance Cluster

You must follow specific steps when starting up a whole VMware Cloud Director cluster.

Note: You must follow the specific order of powering on the VMware Cloud Director appliance cells.

Procedure

  1. Log in to the vSphere Client UI.
  2. Power on the primary cell.
  3. Power on any standby cells.
  4. Power on any application cells.