Protecting the VI workload domain vCenter Server is important because it is the central point of management and monitoring for the VI workload domain.

VMware Cloud Foundation supports only vSphere High Availability (vSphere HA) as a high availability method for the VI workload domain vCenter Server.

Table 1. Methods for Protecting the vCenter Server Appliance

High Availability Method

Protects vCenter Server Appliance

Supported in VMware Cloud Foundation

Automated protection by using vSphere HA

Yes

Yes

Manual configuration and manual failover, for example, by using a cold standby clone.

Yes

No

vCenter Server High Availability

Yes

No

vSphere FT

Yes

No
Table 2. Design Decisions on High Availability of a VI Workload Domain vCenter Server

Decision ID

Design Decision

Design Justification

Design Implication

VCF-WLD-VCS-CFG-006

Protect the vCenter Server appliance by using vSphere HA.

Supports the availability objectives for vCenter Server appliances without requiring manual intervention if a failure occurs.

vCenter Server becomes unavailable during a vSphere HA failover.

VCF-WLD-VCS-CFG-007

In vSphere HA, set the restart priority policy for the vCenter Server appliance to high.

vCenter Server is the management and control plane for physical and virtual infrastructure. In a vSphere HA event, to ensure the rest of the SDDC management stack comes up faultlessly, VI workload domain vCenter Server must be available first, before the other management components come online.

If the restart priority for another virtual machines is set to highest, the connectivity delays for management components will be longer.