Knowledge
- Identify VMware FT hardware requirements
- Identify VMware FT compatibility requirements
Skills and Abilities
- Modify VM and ESX/ESXi Host settings to allow for FT compatibility
- Use VMware best practices to prepare a vSphere environment for FT
- Configure FT logging
- Prepare the infrastructure for FT compliance
- Test FT failover secondary restart and application fault tolerance in a FT Virtual Machine
Tools
- vSphere Availability Guide
- Product Documentation
- vSphere Client
Notes
This is a fairly quick objective to run through. I recommend giving Eric Siebert’s blog article a good read if you are not familiar with the requirements and concepts behind fault tolerance. Additionally Vladan Seget has a great blog on troubleshooting FT.
Identify VMware FT hardware requirements
Requires a Fault Tolerance capable processor and both hosts but have the same processor family. While the speeds don’t have to match remember that FT relies on close synchronization so the closer they are the better.
Identify VMware FT compatibility requirements
- Same Build number for ESX(i) hosts
- Gigabit NIC’s
- Common Shared Storage
- Single Proc machine
- Thin Provisioned disks not supported (automatically converted)
- No snapshots
Use VMware best practices to prepare a vSphere environment for FT
Use the VMware Site Survey utility to check configuration compatibility with advanced features such as Fault Tolerance.
Configure FT logging
- Check the box on the virtual NIC for “Use this virtual adapter for Fault Tolerance logging”
- Separate NIC for FT Logging and vMotion recommended.
Prepare the infrastructure for FT compliance
On the Summary page of each host you will see the status of Fault Tolerance and can view the requirements you will need to take action on there.