Fault tolerance and multiple vCPU

[ensf23]

I am trying to turn on Fault Tolerance for my MS Exchange 2010 server.  I configured the server to have 4 vCPU, and now of course Fault Tolerance cannot be enabled.  Couple Questions:  Is VMWare working toward removing that requirement?  I have very few Guest OS with only one vCPU.  Also, has anyone tried to run the MS Exchange 2010 with only one vCPU?  I think performance would be greatly affected.  We have a 2000 mailbox environment.

[MauroBonder]

you only can enable FT when you use VM with 1VCPU.

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/fault_tolerance_recommendations_considerations_on_vmw_vsphere4.pdf

this is limitation of FT !!!

check all requeriments http://communities.vmware.com/blogs/vmroyale/2009/05/18/vmware-fault-tolerance-requirements-and-limi...

[Troy_Clavell]

as you've found out, FT only is supported for single vCPU guests.  With that said, VMware will not comment of future releases.

[malaysiavm]

you may consider to build Microsoft Exchange HA cluster on top of virtualization to fit your requirement. That require enterprise edition fromt he exchange 2010 with sp1. FT may not fit in your case until further notification from vmware if there are any changes of the requirement for FT

[vmroyale]

Hello.

It is being worked on, as discussed in this thread.  But, like Troy said, there is no date available.

Good Luck!

[DSTAVERT]

Within Exchange 2010 there are better ways to provide high availability. I would look at those.   http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ee835711.aspx

[mcowger]

Agreed - I'd use FT only whe there isn't a better way (like DAGs).

[admin]

As VMware says that you need to use only one vCPU for FT to work. So in this case it is a constraint to use FT as you are using 4 vCPU. Secondly for a 2000 users mail server if you use 1 vCPU you are going to get a perf hit. I would suggest check with Exchance Profile Analyzer to see how you want to size it.

[owen_thomas]

One question:  You say you don't have many virtual machines with only 1 vCPU.  Are you saying that almost all of your VM's are running multi-threaded applications?  Because this is not the norm.  The vast majority of VM's at customer locations are 1 vCPU.  If your VM's aren't running multi-threaded applications, you'll probably do better to run them with 1 vCPU.

[RanjnaAggarwal]

First of all i want to say FT is for those critical applications those are not providing their own HA solution then you can use this vmware vsphere FT feature if you are using the exchange use DAG because there is no method which is better than application level HA.