VMware High Availability

VMware High Availability: High Availability for Virtual Machines

VMware High Availability (HA) is a subset of vSphere Availability, which is part of VMware vSphere. VMware HA helps minimize virtual machine downtime in the event of a hypervisor (ESXi) host failure.

How Does VMware High Availability Work?

vSphere HA provides high availability by grouping virtual machines and their hosts in a cluster. The hosts in the cluster are monitored and in the event of a failure, virtual machines on the failed host are restarted on alternate hosts.

When you create a vSphere HA cluster, a single host is automatically selected as the master host. The master host communicates with vCenter Server and monitors the status of all protected virtual machines and secondary hosts.

Resource Management with VMware High Availability

VMware vSphere High Availability provides the availability that most applications require when running in virtual machines. High Availability provides cost-effective failover protection against hardware and operating system failures in your virtualized IT environment.

VMware vSphere High Availability monitors VMware vSphere hosts and virtual machines and restarts virtual machines on other hosts without manual intervention when a problem is detected.

Conclusion

By providing proactive, predictable and prescriptive recommendations, VMware High Availability can improve overall stability and reliability, and reactive support issues can be resolved more quickly. VMware High Availability transforms from a reactive, break/fix to a proactive, predictable experience that delivers a greater return on your VMware support investment.