6.7
Table Of Contents
- vSphere Availability
- Contents
- About vSphere Availability
- Business Continuity and Minimizing Downtime
- Creating and Using vSphere HA Clusters
- Providing Fault Tolerance for Virtual Machines
- How Fault Tolerance Works
- Fault Tolerance Use Cases
- Fault Tolerance Requirements, Limits, and Licensing
- Fault Tolerance Interoperability
- Preparing Your Cluster and Hosts for Fault Tolerance
- Using Fault Tolerance
- Best Practices for Fault Tolerance
- Legacy Fault Tolerance
- Troubleshooting Fault Tolerant Virtual Machines
- Hardware Virtualization Not Enabled
- Compatible Hosts Not Available for Secondary VM
- Secondary VM on Overcommitted Host Degrades Performance of Primary VM
- Increased Network Latency Observed in FT Virtual Machines
- Some Hosts Are Overloaded with FT Virtual Machines
- Losing Access to FT Metadata Datastore
- Turning On vSphere FT for Powered-On VM Fails
- FT Virtual Machines not Placed or Evacuated by vSphere DRS
- Fault Tolerant Virtual Machine Failovers
- vCenter High Availability
- Plan the vCenter HA Deployment
- Configure the Network
- Configure vCenter HA With the Basic Option
- Configure vCenter HA With the Advanced Option
- Manage the vCenter HA Configuration
- Set Up SNMP Traps
- Set Up Your Environment to Use Custom Certificates
- Manage vCenter HA SSH Keys
- Initiate a vCenter HA Failover
- Edit the vCenter HA Cluster Configuration
- Perform Backup and Restore Operations
- Remove a vCenter HA Configuration
- Reboot All vCenter HA Nodes
- Change the Appliance Environment
- Collecting Support Bundles for a vCenter HA Node
- Troubleshoot Your vCenter HA Environment
- Patching a vCenter High Availability Environment
- Using Microsoft Clustering Service for vCenter Server on Windows High Availability
6 (Optional) You can change other settings, such as the Automation level, VM restart priority,
Response for Host Isolation, VMCP settings,VM Monitoring, or VM monitoring sensitivity
settings.
Note You can view the cluster defaults for these settings by first expanding Relevant Cluster
Settings and then expanding vSphere HA.
7 Click OK.
The virtual machine’s behavior now differs from the cluster defaults for each setting that you changed.
Best Practices for VMware vSphere
®
High Availability
Clusters
To ensure optimal vSphere HA cluster performance, you must follow certain best practices. This section
highlights some of the key best practices for a vSphere HA cluster.
You can also refer to the vSphere High Availability Deployment Best Practices publication for further
discussion.
Best Practices for Networking
Observe the following best practices for the configuration of host NICs and network topology for vSphere
HA. Best Practices include recommendations for your ESXi hosts, and for cabling, switches, routers, and
firewalls.
Network Configuration and Maintenance
The following network maintenance suggestions can help you avoid the accidental detection of failed
hosts and network isolation because of dropped vSphere HA heartbeats.
n
When changing the networks that your clustered ESXi hosts are on, suspend the Host Monitoring
feature. Changing your network hardware or networking settings can interrupt the heartbeats that
vSphere HA uses to detect host failures, which might result in unwanted attempts to fail over virtual
machines.
n
When you change the networking configuration on the ESXi hosts themselves, for example, adding
port groups, or removing vSwitches, suspend Host Monitoring. After you have made the networking
configuration changes, you must reconfigure vSphere HA on all hosts in the cluster, which causes the
network information to be reinspected. Then re-enable Host Monitoring.
Note Because networking is a vital component of vSphere HA, if network maintenance must be
performed inform the vSphere HA administrator.
vSphere Availability
VMware, Inc. 44