Hello,
This thread was moved to the vCenter Server forum.
If vCenter server crashes and you use VDS switches you may not be able to boot VMs onto those switches until vCenter comes back, as vCenter is the control plane. This depends on how your VDS is setup, cache times, etc. In these cases, I log directly into the vSphere host using a local .NET client and find vCenter, you may have to log into all your hosts. Determine why it crashed. It if is repairable repair the VM, then boot it. If it is not repairable, you start over by installing vCenter attach it to the hosts in question and then reconfigure everything.
If your DB is NOT corrupt, then you reinstall vCenter and just attach to the existing DB. Your hosts will appear just fine.
I suggest you backup your vCenter server, database, etc. I recently had such a failure and to fix I had to reinstall vCenter and then import everything. My database was toast as well. Yes, vCenter can be backed up by virtualization aware tools. I would do so.
Best regards,
Edward L. Haletky
VMware Communities User Moderator, VMware vExpert 2009, 2010, 2011,2012,2013,2014
Author of the books 'VMWare ESX and ESXi in the Enterprise: Planning Deployment Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2011 Pearson Education. 'VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing the Virtual Environment', Copyright 2009 Pearson Education.
Virtualization and Cloud Security Analyst: The Virtualization Practice, LLC -- vSphere Upgrade Saga -- Virtualization Security Round Table Podcast