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FasMachine
Contributor
Contributor

Virtual Alternative to Failover Cluster?

Hello VMWare community.

I am looking to provide end users with a small, simple and relatively inexpensive alternative to failover clustering. There would be two physical servers to host a single virtual machine running Windows Server 2012 R2, SQL and an industrial automation app. 

The VM image will need to be periodically replicated onto whichever physical server is not actively hosting the VM, or constantly replicating if it can do so with low enough overhead.

Ideally, if the physical server which is actively hosting the VM fails, the other physical server would automatically fire up and run the VM without, or with minimal user intervention.

Can VSphere be the solution I'm looking for? Which product in particular?

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parmarr
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

There are few ways to achieve HA of a Virtual machine. The minimum prerequisite are 2 physical server with ESXi 5.x /6.x version and a vCenter server 5.x/ 6.x newer version, a shared Storage with vSAN /FC/ISCSI/NFS choose the SAN box based on the application IOPS required for a good performance. 

Refer the Hardware compatible list to check the supported hardware and software for vSphere Environment. https://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php

Types of failover available:

VSphere HA: VMware HA provides high availability for virtual machines by pooling them and the hosts they reside on into a cluster. Hosts in the cluster are monitored and in the event of a failure, the virtual machines on a failed host are restarted on alternate hosts.

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.0/com.vmware.vsphere.avail.doc/GUID-BA85FEC4-A37C-45BA-9...

Failover Clustering and Microsoft Cluster Service: VMware vSphere supports clustering using MSCS across virtual machines. Clustering virtual machines can reduce the hardware costs of traditional high-availability clusters.

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.5/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-65-setup-mscs.pdf

Sincerely, Rahul Parmar VMware Support Moderator
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