Since a vCenter has a connection to a single PSC it’s important to understand how to move between PSC’s and deploy new ones when old ones have failed. ​​​​ This article details this​​ mobility and process. ​​​​

Once installed check for working vCenter

Then login via ssh and check which PSC is being used

Let’s repoint it to psc2.griffiths.local

cmsso-util repoint --repoint-psc psc2.griffiths.local

Now we are pointing to psc2 at site1. ​​ In 6.0 you were able to repoint a vCenter to different site PSC’s this is no longer available in 6.5 (Yep no longer possible remember this trying to repoint can cause some really bad stuff in 6.5). ​​ ​​​​

As you can see we have repointed the psc from 1 to 2 at the same site:

So what do you do when all your PSC’s at a site have failed? ​​ (Don’t have a single PSC at a site first off..) ​​​​ Or this:

Install a new PSC pointing to a remaining site psc we will use psc3 at site2 to create a new PSC5 at site1. ​​ In order to test this I shutdown psc1 and psc2 to simulate failures. ​​





So we are creating:​​

After the PSC is installed it will replicate with psc3.griffiths.local only. ​​ ​​​​ We then can repoint vc1 to psc5 and rebuild missing psc’s at site1. ​​ ​​​​ We​​ have to make sure PSC5 was deployed correctly first via visiting it’s webpage:

Now we can repoint the vc to psc5 at site1. ​​

Login to the vCenter web client to test working authentication via psc5

And it’s working

William Lam posted a script to​​ automatically change vCenter to new PSC when a failure is detected and it’s here:

http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2015/12/how-to-automatically-repoint-failover-vcsa-to-another-replicated-platform-services-controller-psc.html

For those who don’t want to read the script it’s very simple it runs on the vCenter appliance and checks the PSC web page for a​​ return code of 200 if it fails 3 times it switches to another PSC. ​​​​ It runs as a automated task every x minutes.​​

Remove an old PSC

Login to any PSC and type the following command:

cmsso-util unregister –node-pnid OLD_PSC_Name –username administrator@sso_domainname

So to remove psc1.griffiths.local I would type:

cmsso-util unregister –node-pnid psc1.griffiths.local –username administrator@vsphere.local