VMware Fault Tolerance (FT) in Vsphere 6.0

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

Benefits of Fault Tolerance

• 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

What’s New in vSphere 6.0 Fault Tolerance

• FT support 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 FT 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.

 Graphic thanks to VMware.com

Difference between vSphere 5.5 and vSphere 6.0 Fault Tolerance (FT)

vCenter Server 6.0

In vSphere 6.0, you will notice considerably new terms, when installation vCenter Server 6.0. As similar to the previous versions of vCenter Deployment, You can install vCenter Server on a host machine running Microsoft Windows Server 2008 SP2 or later or you can deploy vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA). With vSphere 6.0, There are 2 different new vCenter Deployment Models.

• vCenter with an embedded Platform Services Controller
• vCenter with an external Platform Services Controller

One of the Considerable Change, you will notice with vCenter Server installation is deployment models and embedded database. Embedded database has been changed from SQL express edition to vFabric Postgres database. vFabric Postgres database embedded with vCenter installer is suitable for the environments with up to 20 hosts and 200 virtual machines and vCenter 6.0 continuous to support Microsoft and Oracle Database as external database. with vCenter Upgrades, where SQL express was installed will be converted to vPostgres. Let’s review the System requirements to install vCenter 6.0:
Supported Windows Operation System for vCenter 6.0 Installation:

• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 SP2 64-bit
• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit
• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 64-bit
• Microsoft Windows Server 2012 64-bit
• Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 64-bit

 Supported Databases for vCenter 6.0 Installation:

• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2
• Microsoft SQL Server 2012
• Microsoft SQL Server 2012 SP1
• Microsoft SQL Server 2014
• Oracle 11g R2 11.2.0.4
• Oracle 12c

Components of vCenter Server 6.0:

There are two Major Components of vCenter 6.0:

• vCenter Server: vCenter Server product, that contains all of the products such as vCenter Server, vSphere Web Client,Inventory Service, vSphere Auto Deploy, vSphere ESXi Dump Collector, and vSphere Syslog Collector

• VMware Platform Services Controller: Platform Services Controller contains all of the services necessary for running the products, such as vCenter Single Sign-On, License Service and VMware Certificate Authority

vCenter 6.0 Deployment Models:

vSphere 6.0 introduces vCenter Server with two deployment model. vCenter with external Platform Services Controller and vCenter Server with an embedded Platform Services Controller.

vCenter with an embedded Platform Services Controller:

All services bundled with the Platform Services Controller are deployed on the same host machine as vCenter Server. vCenter Server with an embedded Platform Services Controller is suitable for smaller environments with eight or less product instances.

vCenter with an external Platform Services Controller:

The services bundled with the Platform Services Controller and vCenter Server are deployed on different host machines.You must deploy the VMware Platform Services Controller first on one virtual machine or host and then deploy vCenter Server on another virtual machine or host. The Platform Services Controller can be shared across many products. This configuration is suitable for larger environments with nine or more product instances.