MSCS in VMWare 4.x and ESXi 4.x

[turtlexpress]

Hi,

May I know is MSCS officially supported in VMWare 4.x?

I have spoken to several people and has been given different answers. Most of them say it will work but is not supported by MS. So the official answer is no but it can be implemented at your own risk.

I have read up the document by VMWare on "Setup for Failover Clustering and MSCS".

So what is the official stand from MS? Does anyone knows?

Thanks.

Best Regards,

WY

[idle-jam]

as long as you follow the guideline from vmware, vmware will support you all the way ..

[NuggetGTR]

MS support it and VMware support it, only if you follow that guide.

I have about 50 MSCS clusters in my environment.

also worth a mention ESX 4.0 VMware will not support a MSCS virtual in a DRS cluster. was only as of ESX 4 update 1 that it was offically supported within a DRS cluster.

Cheers

[slaclair]

Oh wow, I wasn't aware Update 1 supported DRS with MSCS

But to the original poster, yes you can use MSCS clusters and maintain support from both vendors

www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_mscs.pdf

[NuggetGTR]

slaclair wrote:

Oh wow, I wasn't aware Update 1 supported DRS with MSCS

But to the original poster, yes you can use MSCS clusters and maintain support from both vendors

www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_mscs.pdf

Sorry ill rephrase, DRS still had to be disabled for the MSCS virtuals, but before update 1 if a MSCS virtual was in a DRS cluster is wasnt supported... not sure why, was only at the release of update 1 that they supported a MSCS virtual to be within a DRS cluster.

[VMmatty · Accepted solution]

Any time you want to verify support for any Microsoft application running in a virtual machine (on any hypervisor), I would recommend starting here:

http://www.windowsservercatalog.com/svvp.aspx?svvppage=svvpwizard.htm

That is a wizard that allows you to enter your application and hypervisor and it tells you the level of Microsoft support.  Remember that VMware needs to support it but they won't support application issues inside the guest in most cases so that will be up to Microsoft.  I'd recommend starting there to make sure that your configuration will be supported.

Most Microsoft applications should support it.  I know that Exchange 2010, SQL, etc., all support failover clustering in guests.

Matt

http://www.thelowercasew.com