couple of doubts.. vcenter/esx

[ranjitcool]

I have a couple of qs, please do advice..

1. I have a dell r900 server as esx1 as of now. it has dual quad core 2 core 8 cpu's and 16 gb of ram. For esx2 can I have a dell 2950 server as esx2 with a different set to processor and ram size? OR does it have to be a mirror copy of esx1 hardware?Please advice. After getting esx2 i want to implement vmotion.

2. After having esx1 and esx2 setup if a vm in esx1 goes down, vcenter restarts it in esx2. But Can I have an active hot fail over? rather than vcenter RESTARTING the vm? Like an immediate switch of data? or transactions or something like that?

3. If i update a config setting in a vm in esx1 do I have to manually update it in the same vm in esx2 or does vcenter mirror them after an interval?

Please advice

Thanks

RJ

May be we all live virtual lives..

[AntonVZhbankov]

1. You can have any set of equipment, it is recommended but not required to have identical servers. Less models and configurations - less possible problems.

2. Hot failover can be performed by Fault Tolerance feture in vSphere Advanced edition and above.

3. There is solution to your problem called Host Profiles in vSphere Enterprise Plus Edition.

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VMware vExpert '2009

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[azn2kew]

In order to have VMotion between two hosts, it must be the same CPU family or different CPU family if you enable Enhance Compability VMotion (EVC) feature. You can check out the CPU VMotion matrix here for details

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

VMware vExpert 2009

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

[ranjitcool]

Thanks for the reply Anton,

I guess I will have to purchase vshpere enterprise edition license for the whole set of what i need to get done right?

Would you agree?

RJ

May be we all live virtual lives..

[ranjitcool]

Hey Anz2kew,

You seem to have edited the post and removed the HA para. (wonder why). I think you left me more confused.

I wanted the two esx hosts have all the vms on each of them always on so if vm1 in esx1 goes down unexpectedly then vm1 on esx2 can take it on the fly. I dont want the vm1 on esx2 to boot up and then take over.

I hope it makes sense.

Thanks

RJ

May be we all live virtual lives..

[AntonVZhbankov]

If you want to use Fault Tolerance Feature you need FT capable hardware, only a couple of latest CPU generations support FT.

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VMware vExpert '2009

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[ranjitcool]

Thanks for the tip,

I thought and I still think FT is more of a software feature than a hardware is it not so?

I mean logically if a server goes down vcenter would redirect the processes to the other host, what role could the processor possibly play in moving these?

RJ

May be we all live virtual lives..

[AntonVZhbankov]

FT is software feature that uses certain CPU capabilities of latest CPU genrations.

FT runs 2 identical VMs at the same time on 2 different hosts, so when one host goes down, VM on another host just become active and continue.

Currently it also has some limitations. For. ex. only Fault Tolerance can be used for 1 vCPU VMs only.

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VMware vExpert '2009

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[AntonVZhbankov]

If you consider any comment as helpful, please award points

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VMware vExpert '2009

http://blog.vadmin.ru