#VMWARE VSPHERE 6.5 FAULT TOLERANCE UPDATE#
#VMWARE VSPHERE 6.5 FAULT TOLERANCE PATCH#
#VMWARE VSPHERE 6.5 FAULT TOLERANCE WINDOWS#

FT VM now Supports upto 4 vCPUs and 64 GB of RAM (Which was 1 vCPu and 64 GB RAM in vSphere 5.5). With vSphere 6.0, VMware broken the limitation lock of Fault Tolerance. VMware Fault Tolerance (FT) is being one of my favorite feature but because of its vCPU limitation, It was not helping to protect the Mission Critical applications.

#VMWARE VSPHERE 6.5 FAULT TOLERANCE WINDOWS#

Diff VCenter 5.5 appliance and vCenter on WIndows.

#VMWARE VSPHERE 6.5 FAULT TOLERANCE UPDATE#

VMware Update Manager integrated into VCSA (no Windows required).

Builtin backup/restore of all VCSA configuration.

Builtin monitoring web interface for the VCSA.

Active/Passive HA functionality for vCenter (VCSA only).

There will be some native replication and monitoring for VCSA as follows: Update 09.2016: During VMworld 2016 US, VMware announced some new features in vSphere 6.5. I hope that VMware adds some additional possibilities in the near future. Unfortunately, currently, there are not native vCenter features to protect itself so we have to use mentioned availability options. VCenter is a crucial component of VMware infrastructure that we should protect.

For the smaller environment, VMware Fault Tolerance in vSphere 6 allows to protect VMs up to 4 vCPU - RTO=0.įor more information about vCenter High Availability Options please follow a post here.

We should specify the highest priority for the vCenter restart.

Using VMware HA (if vCenter is virtualized) - RTO ~minutes.

Since vCenter 5.5 U2 is possible to build a vCenter cluster.

Clustering Windows-based vCenter using Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) - RTO ~minutes.

Fortunately, we can use some availability options: We should limit or totally avoid vCenter downtime (RTO). VCenter can be crucial for 3rd applications, other VMware components (e.g. However, if you need to change network settings for VM, you can change only to network in the port group located in vSS. Admission Control does not work too.Īll VMs connected to the vDS still should have network access even vCenter failure. There are not possible to do any changes in HA configuration (e.g. As vCenter is responsible for the protection or unprotection of virtual machines - 'new powered on VMs' will not be protected by VMware HA until vCenter is back and online. VMware HA will restart VMs (powered on before vCenter unavailability) in case of ESXi host failure. FT failovers in case of VM fail, however, does not select a new secondary. As DRS relies on vMotion/Storage vMotion and vCenter calculates a correct balance - DRS does not work when vCenter is down.Īll VMs configured (protected) by FT before vCenter outgate is safe. VMware DRS dynamically balances computing capacity across ESXi hosts (DRS) or between datastores (Storage DRS). These features are available only when vCenter is up (available).ĭistributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) and Storage DRS Storage vMotion is a feature that allows the live migration of a running virtual machine's VMDKs from one storage system to another, with no downtime for the VM. VMotion allows m oving a virtual machine from one physical server (ESXi host) to another with no downtime.

#VMWARE VSPHERE 6.5 FAULT TOLERANCE PATCH#

In spite of possibility to patch ESXi hosts using the esxcli command - it may have an impact as you can not do vMotion to migrate VMs between hosts (VMs shut down required). If your vCenter is down, you can't use VMware Update Manager to patch your ESXi hosts. So if you have 100 hosts and you need to do sth with 10 VMs, you have to log in at least once or max 100 times in the worst case.because maybe you would have to find those VMs 😉 However, still all your VMs are running and if you need to administer them you have to log in directly to ESXi hosts (separately). Of course, when your vCenter is unavailable, you do not have the central management of your VMware environment. To illustrate this, the below figure presents features not working (red) or limited working (blue) during the vCenter down. Ok, so what happens with above features when vCenter is unavailable? The most important thing is: all workloads (VMs) should be running fine. Impact on VMware environment when vCenter is down There are also other functions such as easier patching of your VMware infrastructure by integration with the VMware Update Manager component, doing the backup of VMs. Depends on vSphere license, allows you to use DRS/DPM, Storage DRS, vMotion, Fault Tolerance (FT), High Availability (HA) or vSphere Distributed Switch (vDS).you can create custom roles and permissions. Central management of VMware environments - allows you to manage VM's across multiple VMware hosts at once.The main vCenter features are as follows: Everybody probably knows that vCenter is a heart of VMware infrastructure installed as Appliance (VCSA) or Windows machine. Over the past few months, I have seen posts or been asked what happens when vCenter is down.

Vmware vsphere 6.5 fault tolerance