VMware VS4-STD-C Evaluator Guide - Page 29

Storage Heartbeats, Validating VMware HA Operation, Host Failure - section

Page 29 highlights

Storage Heartbeats VMware vSphere 5.0 Evaluation Guide - Volume One Figure 21. Datastore Heartbeating Window Storage heartbeats provide a secondary communication path in the event of a failure of the management network. This is advantageous, because it provides another level of redundancy and allows for the determination of failure between a network and a host failure. By default, two datastores will be chosen based on the connectivity they have to other hosts and the type of storage. This attempts to provide protection against array failures and allows for the highest number of hosts to utilize the heartbeat datastore. The datastores utilized can be manually specified if desired. Validating VMware HA Operation In order to see VMware HA in action, we need to inject faults into the environment. This section will demonstrate the ways in which to do this for the most common failure cases, so that you can validate the operation of VMware HA and can test ways to recover from a failure. Host Failure The most common failure case involves the failure of a physical host. This can be for a variety of reasons, such as a loss of power to the host or a motherboard failure. TECHNICAL WHITE PAPER / 29

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • 10
  • 11
  • 12
  • 13
  • 14
  • 15
  • 16
  • 17
  • 18
  • 19
  • 20
  • 21
  • 22
  • 23
  • 24
  • 25
  • 26
  • 27
  • 28
  • 29
  • 30
  • 31
  • 32
  • 33
  • 34
  • 35
  • 36
  • 37
  • 38
  • 39
  • 40
  • 41
  • 42
  • 43
  • 44
  • 45
  • 46
  • 47
  • 48
  • 49
  • 50
  • 51
  • 52
  • 53
  • 54
  • 55
  • 56
  • 57
  • 58
  • 59
  • 60
  • 61
  • 62
  • 63
  • 64
  • 65
  • 66
  • 67
  • 68
  • 69
  • 70
  • 71
  • 72
  • 73
  • 74
  • 75
  • 76
  • 77
  • 78
  • 79
  • 80
  • 81
  • 82
  • 83
  • 84
  • 85
  • 86
  • 87
  • 88
  • 89
  • 90
  • 91
  • 92
  • 93
  • 94
  • 95
  • 96
  • 97
  • 98
  • 99
  • 100
  • 101
  • 102
  • 103
  • 104
  • 105
  • 106

TECHNICAL WHITE PAPER / 29
VMware vSphere 5.0 Evaluation Guide –
Volume One
Storage Heartbeats
Figure 21.
Datastore Heartbeating Window
Storage heartbeats provide a secondary communication path in the event of a failure of the management
network. This is advantageous, because it provides another level of redundancy and allows for the determination
of failure between a network and a host failure. By default, two datastores will be chosen based on the
connectivity they have to other hosts and the type of storage. This attempts to provide protection against array
failures and allows for the highest number of hosts to utilize the heartbeat datastore. The datastores utilized can
be manually specified if desired.
Validating VMware HA Operation
In order to see VMware HA in action, we need to inject faults into the environment. This section will demonstrate
the ways in which to do this for the most common failure cases, so that you can validate the operation of
VMware HA and can test ways to recover from a failure.
Host Failure
The most common failure case involves the failure of a physical host. This can be for a variety of reasons, such as
a loss of power to the host or a motherboard failure.