BC3370

VMware Fault Tolerance - Overview and Best Practices

In this talk, we give an overview of VMware Fault Tolerance (FT), a vSphere 4.0 feature. This feature allows a virtual machine (VM) to survive a server failure without any interruption in service. When FT is enabled on a VM, a Primary VM and Secondary VM are created, and will execute in near-lockstep on two distinct servers. If either server has a hardware failure, the VM running on the other server will continue executing as the Primary VM without interruption and without losing any network connections. A new Secondary VM will automatically be created on another server. In this talk, we will describe the configuration, management, and monitoring of FT VMs using the vSphere Client. We will describe the behavior of a FT VM during normal workflows (power-on, power-off, VMotion, etc.) and its interaction with other vSphere features. We will also discuss some best practices for ensuring the highest reliability, while still taking advantage of the inherent flexibility of vSphere. Finally, we will discuss some of considerations in deciding to protect a VM via VMware FT vs. using only VMware HA.

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

Breakout Session

VMware Fault Tolerance, Overview , Best Practices

1 Hour

Lan Huang, Staff Engineer
VMware