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VMware Fault Tolerance

description VMware Fault Tolerance Overview

VMware Fault Tolerance is a software solution that provides continuous availability for virtual machines. It achieves this through synchronous replication to secondary hosts, allowing immediate failover during primary server outages. This technology is particularly beneficial for organizations requiring high-availability solutions for critical applications and disaster recovery scenarios, supporting IT administrators and operations teams focused on minimizing service interruptions and data loss.

help VMware Fault Tolerance FAQ

How does VMware Fault Tolerance protect virtual machines?

VMware Fault Tolerance protects critical applications by creating synchronously mirrored copies of virtual machines. If the primary server experiences a failure, it enables a near-instant failover to a secondary host, minimizing downtime and data loss.

What is the difference between VMware HA and Fault Tolerance?

VMware High Availability (HA) simply restarts a crashed virtual machine on another server, which results in some downtime, whereas Fault Tolerance creates synchronously mirrored copies that run simultaneously. This means FT provides near-instant failover with zero data loss, unlike HA.

Does VMware Fault Tolerance require special hardware?

While it doesn't require proprietary hardware, it does require a specific cluster configuration with multiple ESXi hosts and compatible network connections. These secondary hosts must have sufficient available CPU and memory resources to maintain the synchronously mirrored copies.

Can I use VMware Fault Tolerance for high-performance databases?

VMware Fault Tolerance historically had strict CPU limitations and latency overhead due to the continuous synchronization required for mirrored copies. While excellent for minimizing downtime in critical applications, high-performance databases often require careful resource tuning to function optimally under FT.

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