Ready4Change
Contributor
Contributor

Connection Broker Replica FT

If you configure a standard connection broker and a replica, is this configuration support hot fault tolerance. So if the standard goes down, the replica should begin to recieve the connections? Does the replica upgrade to the primary? How do I further understand how the standard and replica work beyond simply that the configurations replicate from the standard to the replica, unless that is all that it does.

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lamw
Community Manager
Community Manager

I don't know the requirements off hand for the Connection broker offhand but if it's 1 vCPU, then FT should work, you'll want to verify the list of FT requirements. Regarding the replica VM, I don't think FT is design to support Replica VM along with supported Linked Clones referencing the replica VM.

Here is a good blog post on how Base and Replica VMs work: http://rodos.haywood.org/2008/12/storage-analysis-of-vmware-view.html

Essentially you have some gold master VM that can have multiple snapshots for specific points in time (e.g. VM that has snapshot for XP build and Vista biuld). The replica VM is basically a full copy of this gold master VM based on a specific snapshot in which the Linked Clones are then created from, this allows you separate the LC's back to the gold master which allows you to upgrade/patch the gold master without affecting the LC's. If you decide to update the VM XP system to say SP2, then you'll create a new replica from this new snapshot and provision a new Linked Clone tree, you will not be able to just switch the existing Linked Clones over since they reference an old VM and point in time.

Hopefully this clears up some of your questions

=========================================================================

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

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Twitter: @lamw

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Ready4Change
Contributor
Contributor

No, I was reffering more along the lines of the connection broker itself. if you set up a connection broker and then set up a replica, in the event the first connection server you set up dies, will connections be automaticall redirected to the replica and operations continue as normal? Is there anywhere to tune the behavior of the replica (or other nodes in the group) in case a server fails?

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lamw
Community Manager
Community Manager

Ah, when you say replica you meant a redundant Connection broker since "Replica" is actually used as part of the Linked Cloning process in which the parent is referred to.

=========================================================================

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at:

Twitter: @lamw

VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators

VMware Developer Comuunity

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

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Ready4Change
Contributor
Contributor

Correct, this is an architecture without link cloning (composer)

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jbruelasdgo
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

you need a load balancing solution

Jose B Ruelas

Jose B Ruelas http://aservir.wordpress.com
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mrtharp313
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Correct. If your Broker dies, the replica won't just pick up those connections or recieve new connections from the crashed broker's IP address.

My VM rep turned me onto the Hercules Load Balancer: Set him up as a single IP address, and in the config files point to your various Brokers. The load balancer will redirect the connection requests to a working Broker.

http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/300

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Ready4Change
Contributor
Contributor

ok so when using a load balancer, have you ever seen a case where the primary has failed and when a user logs in to the replica, they could see there entitlements but not launch desktops? It works fine as long as both the primary and replica are operational. Once the primary is down, no users can launch there desktops but they can see their entitlements.

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mrtharp313
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I have not seen that case before. To Test the load balancer, I did shut down the NIC of my primary Broker to verify users were redirected to Broker #2 and it worked.

Can you launch the users desktop by connecting to the replica Brokers IP address directly? Or from an Admin side, have you ever logged into the View Administrator on the replica Broker? Sounds like a configuration issue of that the replica Broker is not fully functional.

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