6.0

of mission critical information. With vSphere Fault Tolerance, you can protect this virtual machine prior to
running this report and then turn off or suspend Fault Tolerance after the report has been produced. You
can use On-Demand Fault Tolerance to protect the virtual machine during a critical time period and return
the resources to normal during non-critical operation.
Fault Tolerance Checklist
The following checklist contains cluster, host, and virtual machine requirements that you need to be aware
of before using vSphere Fault Tolerance.
Review this list before setting up Fault Tolerance.
NOTE The failover of fault tolerant virtual machines is independent of vCenter Server, but you must use
vCenter Server to set up your Fault Tolerance clusters.
Cluster Requirements for Fault Tolerance
You must meet the following cluster requirements before you use Fault Tolerance.
n
Fault Tolerance logging and VMotion networking configured. See “Configure Networking for Host
Machines in the vSphere Client,” on page 393.
n
vSphere HA cluster created and enabled. See “Creating and Configuring a vSphere HA Cluster,” on
page 384. vSphere HA must be enabled before you can power on fault tolerant virtual machines or add
a host to a cluster that already supports fault tolerant virtual machines.
Host Requirements for Fault Tolerance
You must meet the following host requirements before you use Fault Tolerance.
n
Hosts must use supported processors.
n
Hosts must be licensed for Fault Tolerance.
n
Hosts must be certified for Fault Tolerance. See
http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php and select Search by Fault Tolerant
Compatible Sets to determine if your hosts are certified.
n
The configuration for each host must have Hardware Virtualization (HV) enabled in the BIOS.
NOTE VMware recommends that the hosts you use to support FT VMs have their BIOS power management
settings turned to "Maximum performance" or "OS-managed performance".
To confirm the compatibility of the hosts in the cluster to support Fault Tolerance, you can also run profile
compliance checks as described in “Create Cluster and Check Compliance in the vSphere Client,” on
page 395.
Virtual Machine Requirements for Fault Tolerance
You must meet the following virtual machine requirements before you use Fault Tolerance.
n
No unsupported devices attached to the virtual machine. See the vSphere Availability publication for
more information on Fault Tolerance Interoperability.
n
Incompatible features must not be running with the fault tolerant virtual machines. See the vSphere
Availability publication for more information on Fault Tolerance Interoperability.
n
Virtual machine files must be stored on shared storage. Acceptable shared storage solutions include
Fibre Channel, (hardware and software) iSCSI, NFS, and NAS.
vSphere Administration with the vSphere Client
392 VMware, Inc.