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aiea96701
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

FT question

I understand that if an ESX host fails that any VM created with FT will use the shadow copy VM and become the primary.  So, that is when an ESX host fails.   My question is:  What if the primary VM fails...for any number of reasons.   Will this same problem cause the secondary shadow copy VM to take over as primary?

What I'm looking for is a method by which a key server VM will always remain operational...

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mcowger
Immortal
Immortal

Yes - if your primary VM fails, the secondary will fail the same way.  In other words - yes, FT replicates bluescreens too Smiley Happy

If you need to keep something active and the application always available, you need some sort of clustering solution on top of your VM.

Whats your application?

--Matt VCDX #52 blog.cowger.us
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aiea96701
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

good point.   thanks.   my concern isn't with a guest application but more with the actual VM system itself but since the VM is just a set of files, we wouldn't have the usual hardware or physical problems.  

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NuggetGTR
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

No It will only protect against host failure

The servers are identical so if the primary OS suffered a BSOD for example  the secondary one will also blue screen.

FT will also not protect against disk failure as they are running off the same files.

Cheers

*edit wow i must have taken a while replying there haha

________________________________________ Blog: http://virtualiseme.net.au VCDX #201 Author of Mastering vRealize Operations Manager
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bulletprooffool
Champion
Champion

It is possible for the ESX host to have hardware fauilure and crash - in this case, the second ESX host assumes management / ownership and the VM continues to operate on the new ESX host. Although the VM is just files etc, it still needs the underlying ESX hardware to operate / process data etc.

You are safe from hardware issues on the ESX host, but you are not protected from OS / Software bugs, or even drivers in this case, as these are all managed by the OS(Windows in your case)  and therefore all instructions are matched and written at both ends.

One day I will virtualise myself . . .