VMware Fault Tolerance (FT)
is being one of my favorite feature but because of its vCPU limitation,
It was not helping to protect the Mission Critical applications. With vSphere 6.0, VMware broken the limitation lock of Fault Tolerance. FT VM now Supports upto 4 vCPUs and 64 GB of RAM (Which
was 1 vCPu and 64 GB RAM in vSphere 5.5). With this vSMP support, Now
FT can be used to protect your Mission Critical applications. Along with
the vSMP FT support, There are lot more features has been added in FT
with vSphere 6.0, Let’s take a look at what’s new in vSphere 6.0 Fault Tolerance(FT).
Graphic thanks to VMware.com
Continuous Availablity with Zero downtime and Zero data loss
NO TCP connections loss during failover
Fault Tolerance is completely transparent to Guest OS.
FT doesn’t depend on Guest OS and application
Instantaneous Failover from Primary VM to Secondary VM in case of ESXi host failure
VMware Faut Tolerance supports upto 4 vCPUs and 64 GB RAM
Fast Check-Pointing, a new Scalable technology is introduced to keep primary and secondary in Sync by replacing “Record-Replay”
vSphere 6.0, Supports vMotion of both Primary and Secondary Virtual Machine
With vSphere 6.0, You will be able to backup your virtual machines.
FT supports for vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP) and it also
supports all leading VADP solutions in Market like symantec, EMC, HP
,etc.
With vSphere 6.0, FT Supports all Virtual Disk Type like EZT, Thick or Thin Provisioned disks. It supports only Eager Zeroed Thick with vSphere 5.5 and earlier versions
Snapshot of VMware Fault Torelance configured Virtual Machines are supported with vSphere 6.0
New version of FT keeps the Separate copies of VM files like .VMX, .VMDk files to
protect primary VM from both Host and Storage failures. You are allowed
to keep both Primary and Secondary VM files on different datastore.
