6.0.1

Configuring VMCP
VM Component Protection is enabled and configured in the vSphere Web Client. To enable this feature, you
must select the Protect against Storage Connectivity Loss checkbox in the edit cluster settings wizard. The
storage protection levels you can choose and the virtual machine remediation actions available differ
depending on the type of database accessibility failure.
PDL failures
A virtual machine is automatically failed over to a new host unless you have
configured VMCP only to Issue events.
APD events
The response to APD events is more complex and accordingly the
configuration is more fine-grained.
After the user-configured Delay for VM failover for APD period has
elapsed, the action taken depends on the policy you selected. An event will
be issued and the virtual machine is restarted conservatively or aggressively.
The conservative approach does not terminate the virtual machine if the
success of the failover is unknown, for example in a network partition. The
aggressive approach does terminate the virtual machine under these
conditions. Neither approach terminates the virtual machine if there are
insufficient resources in the cluster for the failover to succeed.
If APD recovers before the user-configured Delay for VM failover for APD
period has elapsed, you can choose to reset the affected virtual machines,
which recovers the guest applications that were impacted by the IO failures.
NOTE If either the Host Monitoring or VM Restart Priority settings are disabled, VMCP cannot perform
virtual machine restarts. Storage health can still be monitored and events can be issued, however.
For more information on configuring VMCP, see “Configure Virtual Machine Responses,” on page 35.
VMCP Recovery Timeline
The following timeline graphically demonstrates how VMCP recovers from a storage failure.
t=0
t=140s t=140 + 3m
APD_START
APD_TIMEOUT
If APD clears,
reset VM
HA
terminate and
failover VM
n
T=0s: A storage failure is detected. vSphere HA starts the recovery process. For a PDL event, the
workflow immediately starts and VMs are restarted on healthy hosts in the cluster. If the storage loss is
due to an APD event, the APD Timeout timer starts (the default is 140 seconds).
n
T=140s: The host declares an APD Timeout and begins to fail non-VM I/O to the unresponsive storage
device.
n
Between T=140s and 320s: This is the time period defined by the Delay for VM failover for APD,
which is 3 minutes by default. The guest applications might become unstable after losing access to
storage for an extended period of time. If an APD is cleared in this time period, the option to reset the
VMs is available.
vSphere Availability
20 VMware, Inc.