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Fault Tolerance for Virtual Machines

VMware vSphere lets you enable Fault Tolerance (FT) on a VM defined to a cluster which is configured for High Availability (HA). Fault Tolerance creates a secondary VM on another ESX Server in the cluster. The secondary VM operates in lock-step mode with the primary VM that is executing the workload. If there is a failure, the secondary VM immediately takes over the workload execution from the point of failure. CA Server Automation discovers and manages primary and secondary VMs in a cluster.

Regarding VM management, CA Server Automation treats the primary and secondary VM as a single VM, with fault tolerance enabled, and displays its fault tolerant properties. The primary VM appears on the left pane (first class object) and provides its FT properties in the right pane. The secondary VM properties (second class object) are listed in the right pane only. You cannot perform VM operations like start, stop, or clone on secondary VMs.

The number of VMs represented in the General Information panel is based on the running count of non-FT VMs plus primary FT VMs. Secondary FT VMs are not included in the overall total count of VMs.

CA Server Automation gathers FT VM data on various levels in the environment.

More Information

Fault Tolerance Requirements

Fault Tolerance Properties of Virtual Machines

ESX Host Fault Tolerance Attributes