The following are the steps to create VCHA. First, create the VCHA network. This is a VM port group that the active VCSA, the passive VCSA, and the witness communicate and replicate on. They can be attached to your existing vSwitch or an independent vSwitch:

1. Log in to your VCSA using vSphere Web Client.
2. Click on your host, then go to the Configure tab. Click on Virtual switches under Networking.
3. Click on the Add host networking button.
4. Select Virtual Machine Port Group and click Next.
5. Select the existing switch and click Next.
6. Enter the VCHA network for the Network label and click Next.
7. Review the settings and click Finish.
8. Repeat steps 2-7 for your other hosts:

Now that we have created the VCHA network port group on all hosts, we can run the Basic configuration of VCHA.

1. Log in to your VCSA using vSphere Web Client. Log in using the [email protected] (or your PSC domain) account as the wizard may fail if you use another account.
2. Click on VCSA, then click on the Configure tab, and then vCenter HA under Settings.
3. Click on the Configure button:

4. Select the Basic option, then click Next.
5. Enter and IP address and subnet mask for the existing VCSA server on the VCHA network. This IP address needs to be on a different subnet than the main VCSA management IP. Click on the browse button and select the VCHA network that we created previously. Click on Next.

6. Enter the IP address for the passive VCSA node and the witness node on the VCHA network. Click on Next.
7. Next, you can specify the properties the VCSA peer and witness.

8. Click on the Edit button to walk through the configuration of the VCSA peer and witness and make these changes. If you are successful, compatibility checks will succeed. Click on Next.
9. Review the settings and click on Finish.
10. Wait for about 5 minutes for the system to configure the second VCSA and the witness. To name the VMs, the wizard will append the peer to the secondary VCSA and witness to the VCSA witness.
11. When the process has completed, go back to the Configure tab and click on vCenter HA. You should see that vCenter HA is enabled and your active, passive, and witness VMs are up:

12. Now go to the Monitor tab and click on vCenter HA to check the status of the replication. Everything should be in sync:

Finally, we will test the failover of VCSA. To do this, we will simply power off the active VCSA and watch the failover process:

1. With vCenter HA enabled, right-click on the active VCSA VM and select Power, then Power off.
2. Depending on the size of your environment, failover may take up to 5 minutes.
3. Log out of the web client and refresh the web page.
4. When you connect to the web client again, you may see a Failover in progress screen. If you see this, wait for a couple more minutes.

5. After you log back in to the VCHA IP address, click on VCHA and go to the Configure tab and then vCenter HA under Settings. You should see that the VM that was originally in the Active role is now down and in the passive role:

6. Now go to the Monitor tab and click on vCenter HA to check the status of the replication. Since the passive VCSA is down, all of the replication will be out of sync:

At this point, we can simply power on the first VCSA and wait for a few minutes, and replication will start to sync and the health status will go back to green. The system will not trigger a failback automatically, so the second VCSA will continue in the role of the active VCSA until another failure occurs. To trigger a failback manually, click on the Initiate Failover button:

If the active VCSA does ever have an actual failure and cannot be repaired, go to the Configure tab and click on vCenter HA under the Settings section, then click on the Redeploy button to recreate a secondary VCSA.