Have you deployed a pod only with one smart node and running on version 1600.x  (refer to VMware docs page for more details about release notes). Then you have the ability to enable HA for pod where a secondary node will be deployed along with existing smart node appliance.

Though I have already mentioned in my earlier post reg pod creation , I will explaining the procedure again here with with two diff ways of enabling HA for a pod.

• Enable HA during initial pod deployment.
• Enable HA after the pod is deployed.
• Disable HA for pod

Before starting with pod deployment, there are some pre requisites to be checked / enabled as mentioned in post , not done yet .. starting from this version i.e., 1600.x there are few more as mentioned below to support HA capability:

1. Ensure to enable the service endpoint Microsoft.sql to Management subnet and VNET. here is the screenshot for ref:

2. Look after the quota under Dv3 family type, should be at least 10 available as each node manager appliance requires D4v3 – please note this is for version 1600.x and might change in future, keep looking into VMware docs for more details.

Enable HA during initial pod deployment: 

Logon to the Horizon Cloud here using the ‘My VMware’ account credentials

After successful login, the getting started page displays as shown below.. trust me, this is very user friendly.. Add button (as highlighted below), allows you to add compute capacity from your Azure subscription and in this wizard  you will add Azure Cloud Capacity to the customers Cloud Plane.

Add capacity page gives two options i.e., Microsoft Azure and VMware cloud on AWS.. So, for now we will proceed with Microsoft Azure:

Here is the list of details to be provided for connecting to azure portal and lets discuss each of them and the way to collect them from azure portal:

Apply Subscription: Since this is the new pod, click on Add New and this will allow to provide a subscription Name. I recommend to give a name that matches in azure portal.

Subscription Name , Subscription ID: Login to Azure portal > Search > Subscription

Page shows the Subscription Id and Subscription name.

Environment: Select the type of azure environment here

Directory ID, Application ID and Application Key: These details can be collected from azure portal directly and before that, you should create a principal name (app registrations), of course with a friendly name as shown below:

Login to Azure portal > search > Azure Active Directory > Manage > App Registrations

• If a new registration needs to be created, then click on + New Registration and give a friendly name.

  (or)

  •  If registration already exists, then click on SPN  and overview page shows the Application ID, Directory ID.

  

  Under the same registrations page, Manage > Certificates & Secrets > + New client server : Provide Description and set the Expires to Never.

  

  You will see the new key added under client server as shown below and yes, this is the Application Key.. copy and note to save it.

  

  Now we are ready with all the required details to create a POD, so lets gets back to pod creation window and fill the details as collected above:

  

  Fill in the pod name, location and azure region.. please note that cost differs from region to region. I would suggest you carefully select the region based on your design.

  In this section, High Availability Enabled toggle is set to on, which means this pod will have two smart node manager appliances for redundancy. If you want to set this HA appliance to be later point of time, that is possible too. Next section covers that topic.

UAG details are optional and this can be deployed at later point of time as well.

Check the Summary page and click on submit for appliances to get deployed. Progress can be monitored in Horizon portal getting started page.

After successful completion, you can see the pod under capacity section of Admin portal with green status. Appliances can be can see either in Azure portal or under High Availability section of pod.

Enable HA after the pod is deployed: 

In this case I will go through the steps of enabling HA for pod that has already deployed.

Logon to the Horizon Cloud here using the ‘My VMware’ account credentials and navigate to capacity section under settings.

• Select the pod and edit

• Under Pod details, toggle the high availability button to yes , save and exit.

• While the HA node is deploying, status of the pod changes to pending and no other changes to it until the existing tasks completes. HA pod should be deployed in few mins.

After successful completion, you can see the pod under capacity section of Admin portal with green status. You will see two node manager appliances under High Availability section of pod or in the Azure portal.

Disable HA for pod

Logon to the Horizon Cloud here using the ‘My VMware’ account credentials and navigate to capacity section under settings.

• Select the pod and edit

• Under Pod details, toggle the high availability button to No , save and exit.
• This process will delete one of the node manager appliance from pod making it non-redundant. of course, you can re enable in future when ever required. But it is highly recommended to deploy pod with HA enabled.

Thanks for Reading…