Your environment might consist of many vCenter Server instances that are registered with a single Platform Services Controller. You can use a third-party solution to restore a virtual machine that contains a Platform Services Controller. You can also use the third-party solution to restore either virtual machines that contain vCenter Server instances or vCenter Server Appliance instances that are registered with a single external Platform Services Controller.

If the vCenter Server and Platform Services Controller instances fail at the same time, you must first restore the Platform Services Controller and then the vCenter Server instance.

Procedure

  1. Restore the Platform Services Controller virtual machine onto the ESXi host using a third-party solution.
    Wait for all the Platform Services Controller services to start, which can take several minutes.
  2. After the restore succeeds, in the node associated with that Platform Services Controller, run the following commands. 
    service-control --stop --all
service-control --start --all
  3. Restore the vCenter Server virtual machine onto the ESXi host using a third-party solution.
    The services are masked and are not running.
  4. Use the systemctl status applmgmt command to verify that the systemd instance of the applmgmt service has started.
    Wait for all the vCenter Server services to start, which can take several minutes.
  5. Log into the vCenter Server Management Interface, https://appliance-IP-address-or-FQDN:5480.

What to do next

Power on the restored virtual machine that contains the restored vCenter Server instance.