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IvarHome
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vCenter HA v.s. FT

Hi, can I FT vCenter instad of vCenter HA? The idea comes because FT dont have such high requirements as vCenter HA (3 nodes and 16GB ram).

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rcporto
Leadership
Leadership

Yes, you can use FT to protect your vCenter, but there is a limitation on number of vCPU that FT support, for instance, FT on vSphere 6.0 Enterprise Plus support protect a VM with up to 4 vCPU, in that case, you can use FT to protect vCenter only for the tiny and small deployment type, 2 vCPU and 4 vCPU, respectively.

Please refer to the following VMware KB article for supported vCenter high availability options: VMware Knowledge Base

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Richardson Porto
Senior Infrastructure Specialist
LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/richardsonporto
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sk84
Expert
Expert

Basically that should be possible, but I never tested it.

However, only a maximum of 8 vCPUs per FT VM are supported (for vSphere 6.7). So only the small and medium deployment sizes of VCSA 6.7 could be covered. You also need Enterprise Plus licensing for using 8 vCPUs in a FT VM. With Standard and Enterprise license only 2 vCPUs per VM are possible. And for Essentials editions fault tolerance isn't available at all.

Apart from that, FT has many limitations. You should therefore consider carefully whether a specific use case is actually suitable for FT.

Anyway, the main question is; What is cheaper?

In times when memory costs nothing and many ESXi hosts have far more than 128 GB RAM, the 16 GB doesn't matter. In contrast you have to pay for an Enterprise Plus license for x sockets, where only a fraction of the users would benefit from the features of this highest license edition.

Fault Tolerance Requirements, Limits, and Licensing

Fault Tolerance Interoperability

--- Regards, Sebastian VCP6.5-DCV // VCP7-CMA // vSAN 2017 Specialist Please mark this answer as 'helpful' or 'correct' if you think your question has been answered correctly.
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daphnissov
Immortal
Immortal

And to add to what others have said, let me point out the fact that if you don't have 10 GbE NICs on your ESXi hosts you can forget about SMP-FT as it isn't going to work. It seems stupid that you'd go to these lengths (NICs, licensing, etc) to simply avoid the RAM spend on the very feature which is specifically designed to protect vCenter. But, as I constantly discover in my years as a consultant, people want stupid things all the time  : )

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IvarHome
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Ok, thanks to all, it was helpful. 2 vCPU is enough for me. FT important restriction seems you cant take snapshots with mormoy. But I readed snapshots without memory are still allowed, so backup software must work.......But now I see I have other problems. In documentation this 10Gb NIC is as "suggestion", there arent sayed it refuses to work with 1Gb nic, altough the traffic may still stuck, that I believe. Of course buy more RAM is nothing problem, but I cant do that, my ESXi is in barebon computer, it dont support more ram, it only have 8GB. Also it have only one nic, integrated. As just now I readed FT minimum is 2x physical nic, then I cant set up FT to that ESXi. Of course I have other ESXi-s with more physical nics and more ram, but I just wanted to put this small barebon ESXi into FT. So, seems EMC RecoverPoint should only option for me. vSphere HA is also option, but as I like to use local SSD-s and not networked storage, then HA also not in question.

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daphnissov
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You sure seem to like to go to a bunch of trouble to make up for the fact that you don't have an adequate setup to run vSphere with the type of availability you want. My advice:  Spend a few more <currency> and get half-way decent hardware to begin with.

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IvarHome
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My advice:  Spend a few more <currency> and get half-way decent hardware to begin with.

:smileylaugh:  Its not very possible, as this all is my personal home hardware and software and Im pensioner. I dont earn no any money with it, its just for fun (as pensioner, I still cant stop administration) and I already spend lots of money. But in future, of course, if I can I always buy something new.

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IvarHome
Hot Shot
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Altough I dont see real demand for 10Gbit network. Example I want replicate or put in FT windows operating system. What the hell it needs 10 Gbit traffic? There is no such traffic. When windows is in idle, there is almost not at all io traffic. I have example windows running on 1 Gbit Qnap iSCSI. The latency is little higher than internal SSD, but still no any problem. All this is just bad software development, not real demand. In old days, there wasnt at all 10 Gbit networks, but Veritas synchronous replication still worked. And this 2x nic requirement is also stupidity.

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sk84
Expert
Expert

Just because you don't understand the technology doesn't mean it's a stupid solution or bad software development.

FT replicates ALL network packets, ALL CPU cycles, ALL memory changes and ALL IO requests in real time. In the event of a host failure, no network packet, IO request or CPU instruction will be lost. Can Veritas do that too? No, of course not, because you compare FT with a pure storage replication solution. 😉

And it's also clear that the 10 Gbit will not be used completely if the system is only in idle state. But FT is not intended for systems that do nothing because it wouldn't be necessary to keep them high available.

--- Regards, Sebastian VCP6.5-DCV // VCP7-CMA // vSAN 2017 Specialist Please mark this answer as 'helpful' or 'correct' if you think your question has been answered correctly.
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IvarHome
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Why not necessary? Me interest only disk IO replication, I dont need realtime failover.

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sk84
Expert
Expert

Your words:

Altough I dont see real demand for 10Gbit network. Example I want replicate or put in FT windows operating system. What the hell it needs 10 Gbit traffic? There is no such traffic. When windows is in idle, there is almost not at all io traffic. I have example windows running on 1 Gbit Qnap iSCSI. The latency is little higher than internal SSD, but still no any problem. All this is just bad software development, not real demand. In old days, there wasnt at all 10 Gbit networks, but Veritas synchronous replication still worked. And this 2x nic requirement is also stupidity.

If you only need disk IO replication, then FT is the wrong solution anyway. No need to say "All this is just bad software development" or "And this 2x nic requirement is also stupidity". You either don't know what you want, or you choose the wrong solutions and then insult them because they don't fit your problem.

But to be honest, I don't feel like dealing with it anymore. We already know that it's only for a homelab and your hardware is limited and you just want to tinker. Maybe Linux and KVM would be better suited for you than an enterprise virtualization solution that addresses the needs and financial possibilities of companies.

--- Regards, Sebastian VCP6.5-DCV // VCP7-CMA // vSAN 2017 Specialist Please mark this answer as 'helpful' or 'correct' if you think your question has been answered correctly.
IvarHome
Hot Shot
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So, whats the problem with "homelab"? We all live in homes. Hardware is always limited. There is no unlimited hardware. My hardware fit to requirements, except 2 NIC, all is just fit. Of course, there is no real demand for 2 nic in technology aspect of view.   And "addresses the needs and financial possibilities of companies". Do you think hypervisor know about my finances or companies? I dont need your company either.

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daphnissov
Immortal
Immortal

The problem isn't your home lab. The problem is that you're wanting to do ridiculous things in round-about ways with clearly incapable hardware (i.e., going to extreme lengths to provide higher availability for vCenter [RecoverPoint and FT] rather than using vCHA). It's a home lab, not a production environment. If you won't invest in mediocre hardware in order to implement the correct feature for the desired effect, stop trying to do these types of things that are more demanding than what you own. If you want to drive a nail you need a hammer, not a sandal. Most people realize these limitations and tailor their actions accordingly, but not you it would seem. So I'm also throwing in the towel as far as helping you goes. Good luck.

IvarHome
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Hot Shot

I readed RecoverPoint requirements and my hardware fit. 2 vCPUs / 4 GB ram. And 1 nic. There is no 10Gbit requirements in documentation. But still dont work. Here also nobody dont know why. Ok, I understand, here is not correct forum for RecoverPoint. My mistake. But I have experiences, I have tested hundreds of software. I collect software. And most of enterprise software works with even less resources than is written in documentation, especially VMWare. Example, first, ESXi dont need compatibility hardware. Also you can use nic-s not in list, but have written drivers for it by somebody. NSX components work with much less resources than is written in documentation. There is even blocking against VM settings change, but it can unlock. By documentation, only dedicated Nvidia cards works with vDGA or passthrough. Actually all AMD cards work. Dont you see the point. The point is - just buy more hardware, pay more money. There is nothing to do with technology.   

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sk84
Expert
Expert

You just don't want to understand. VMware is an ENTERPRISE solution. So the recommendations and requirements are not based on any homelab and the lowest level, but are designed to work well in enterprise environments with the workloads of an enterprise environment. And VMware must be able to support the whole thing. That means, the requirements and setups are largely standardized to keep support requests as low as possible.

Once again, VMware products are not built for tinkering, but to virtualize the IT environments of companies so that they can make money. I know you'll say now that if the requirements weren't so high and the VMware products didn't cost so much money, companies could make even more money with that. But that's not the way the world works and maybe you therefore read my first sentences again.

And the HCL is only partially managed by VMware. In many cases, manufacturers are responsible for getting their hardware onto the HCL. So complain to AMD, not VMware.

You wrote, that you have so much experience, but then you should know these things...

--- Regards, Sebastian VCP6.5-DCV // VCP7-CMA // vSAN 2017 Specialist Please mark this answer as 'helpful' or 'correct' if you think your question has been answered correctly.
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IvarHome
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It depends what is "enterprise". In my country enterprises or companies hardware is not at alla as you may imagine. Its old hardware, desktop computers, no any cluster at all, free software, no any vmware product. I imagine, also lots of public IT services, example mails, VPS, web, cloud etc, they declare all is in clusters. The fact is actually they are not. So, I think in my country my home hardware is better than enterprises. But Im not actually millonaire. I heared, some guys from usa have in home whole rack hi-tech and all 10Gbit. And its just for fun. They can invest money many times more than companies in my country. I have also invested more than enterprises in my country. So, it all depends. Some hollywood star can also invest more money to home hi-tech. Altough they usually dont have tehnical interest, but I dont know all people in world. So, when some software brand classifies who live in home and who work in company, this is big mistake and dont reflect at all how much money can be invested. And I dont make money. Its just fun. Altough, when I think twice, its also good stuff and it help me to do lots of things from technologi point of view. And also one point - almost all people dont care at all what tecnologi they have at work, they care only what they have in home (husband, childrens, TV, hi-tech, better computer, faster network, some nice automation etc). Thats why enterprises dont care to buy hi-tech. 

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sjesse
Leadership
Leadership

In my opinion you in the wrong place if you don't want to try and meet the requirements, the software it tested for for a certain set of requirements, and the people that contribute here generally support the environments that have those requirements. In my opinion and it seems others of the same, its better to save up, get real experience with supported or close to supported equipment instead of modifying the software to get it to work. Its not about money or not, its about the software working as designed more than anything else.I'm in the progress of doing that now since I've outgrown my lab and seen the concessions and workarounds that are needed in some cases. There are dedicated sites to home lab that may have better suggestions that I'd investigate.

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IvarHome
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Thats good point, only they dont work also as "designed to work". And nobody dont know the reason. Its called buggy software. Example RecoverPoint. 

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comr
Contributor
Contributor

I'm considering using FT too, because vcenter HA need 3 esxi nodes, one for active, one for passive and one for witness, if you put 2 of them in the same node and this node fails you lose vcenter. I don't have 3 nodes, only 2.

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ChrisFD2
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

vCenter HA takes too long to failover to the other node in my experience, vSphere HA will reboot the VM in the event of a host failure and that usually comes up quicker. Just ensure you have a backup of the VM using something like Veeam Community Edition. For a homelabe, vCenter HA and FT are a little overkill unless you want to lab it out of course, in which case a nested lab may work better or look at the Hands on Labs.

Regards,
Chris
VCIX-DCV 2023 | VCIX-NV 2023 | vExpert *** | CCNA R&S
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