vSphere 5.5 App HA Setup Overview

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I decided to document about the setup of vSphere App HA.  This was mainly due to many roadblocks encountered during the installation.  I was not able to find a proper guide or anyone doing a detail explanation of the setup process.  Also the poorly written documents and documents are all over the place as well.

Instructions from the document is also difficult to understand.  I did this many times in my lab to come out with a smooth out process via video and list down all the hiccups you will face.

The App HA documentation site can be found here.

vFabric Hyperic Server documentation can be found here. (This is pointed to version 5.7.x as the vFabric Hyperic Server binary at vCenter 5.5 for App HA is also at 5.7.x.)


The requirements of resources by vFabric Hyperic server:
  • HDD requirements for all deployment: 4.4 GB HDD (thin), 91GB (Thick)
  • Small Deployment (< 50 platforms)
    • Hyperic Server 2vCPU, 2GB memory
    • Postgress DB 2vCPU, 2GB memory
  • Medium deployment (50 to 250 platforms)
    • Hyperic Server 4 vCPU, 4GB memory
    • Postgress DB 4 vCPU, 4GB memory
  •   Large deployment (more than 250 platforms)
    • Hyperic Server 12 vCPU, 8GB memory
    • Postgress DB 12vCPU, 8GB memory
  • App HA server, 2CPU, 4GB memory, 1.3GB HDD (thin)/20GB HDD (Thick)
Before you can setup App HA you need to make sure the below are done:
  • vCenter 5.5 with appropriate license
  • vFabric Hyperic server 5.7.x installed (deployed OVA)
  • Deploy App HA vApp
  • in vSphere Web Client, under Administration>vSphere App HA, enter Hyperic setting to connect App HA to Hyperic Server
  • Check VM & Application monitoring is enable in HA setting
  • vFabric Hyperic Agent installed in guest to be monitored of service (refer below for the agent.conf settings)
  • Setup vFabric Agent running the agent option 'install' and 'start' to go through the setup
  • Configure vFabric Hyperic server to create a vCenter Server Plug-in
  • Create policy
  • Apply to specific service on VM to be monitored
Importing vFabric Hyperic vApp
First of all before importing the vApp, you would need to setup an IP Pool in vSphere client.  (This is called Network Protocol Profiles in the vSphere Web Client)

Here you can see that I enabled the assignment of IP via the IP pool for IPv4.  I selected transient for my IP allocation.

Next I start to import the vFabric Hyperic vApp.
I tried using the web client and occur an error with a quick check a KB was found that this was an error and was asked to use the thick client.  So much of the web client ability.

Going through the import wizard and make sure you specify an IP address for the vFabric Hyperic Server.  I do not recommend transient or DHCP IP unless the IP does not change.  This is due to the setup of the Hyperic agents later on which is configured using IP address.

vFabric Hyperic Agent Configuration
You may use the .exe binary file to perform the installation or extract the agent file from the .zip file.  Below are the configuration changes need to be changed in the agent folder which is extracted from as a folder place in your machine.  The file is located at

\conf\agent.properties

change the values below and uncomment for the top 3 lines below before starting the agent service:
agent.setup.camLogin=hqadmin
agent.setup.camPword=hqadmin
agent.setup.acceptUnverifiedCertificate=yes
accept.unverified.certificates=true

App HA Policy


A rather confusing how the policy settings are worded and place to me.  So here is a summary of how it should sound:
When a service fails, restart service allowing N minutes for each service startup.
Reset VM if restart of service fails.
Reset VM if N times restart of service fails within N period of time.

 

With example here: 
Service is given 1 minute to start completely, if restart fails, reset VM.
Reset VM in the event that Service restart failed.  Reset the VM if Service restarted 2 times (first start considered 1 time) during a 5 minutes window.

Do note that reset here mean force reboot of the VM.  There is no graceful restart of the VM in App HA.

Final Words
vSphere App HA is still at its version 1.0.  I hope to see more improvements like what Symantec App HA has grown to today.  At this point, vSphere App HA is more suitable for customer who just need a application HA solution for the applications supported which require no additional cost other than vSphere Enterprise Plus.  But if you need something that have more granular access and easier to implement with more supported applications, you might have to consider other App HA solution.

Update 3rd June 2014
You may refer to the update for vSphere App Ha 1.1 here.

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