Failover(immediate)

[lsulax]

Is there such a thing as immediate failover in a vmware envirnoment?

for example, How can I have a WSUS server on one Host immediately failover or switch to another replicated WSUS server?Can I have two of the same servers reside on different hosts and when one crashes power on the other one? or does all of this need to exist outside of the vmware envirnoment?

[mreferre]

You can either let VMware manage the critical event or you can let a cluster logic (i.e. like MSCS) on top of VMware to do that.

See this: http://it20.info/blogs/main/archive/2008/03/26/102.aspx

Massimo.

[Ken_Cline · Accepted solution]

Not in VI-3. The next version of VMware (vSphere) will include a feature called Fault Tolerance which will do what you're asking for (run a "shadow" copy of a VM on a second server and have instant failover) - don't know the cost, or even the date of availability...

Ken Cline

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware Communities User Moderator

Blogging at: http://KensVirtualReality.wordpress.com/

[DLeid]

The short answer is no.

[Braumin]

You can set up an active/passive Windows cluster which would do that, and both machines can be in VM on different hosts.

Would HA not be enough for WSUS? Are updates that important that a 5 minute outage would cause issues? Or is WSUS just an example?

[DLeid]

It would still not be technically " Immediate"

[lsulax]

yes, WSUS is just an example!

I can wait for vsphere if need be

[azn2kew]

You can also look at Marathon Technology for everRUN VM but its for Citrix Xen Server so you have wait for vSphere that would be nice to have especially people implemented MSCS right now. Hopefully it works well as advertised and reliable because our SQL/Exchange/Web are soooooooo critical to fool around. You can run Neverfail solutions for IIS, Exchange, SQL and others though!

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Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

VMware vExpert 2009

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant