C/D/H Talks Tech

Author:

Eric Inch

I enjoy learning, using and helping others through technology. This is my second year with C/D/H after many years of consulting for numerous small and mid-sized companies. I enjoy challenging projects and continual improvement in all areas. Most recently, I have been working to help grow the virtualization practice at C/D/H and hopefully add that area to the already impressive expertise in infrastructure consulting at C/D/H.

When I’m not working, I enjoy spending time with my family. I have two little girls who keep me extremely busy but are always the highlight of my day.

For a more in-depth bio and a list of my areas of expertise, please visit http://www.cdh.com.

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Articles by Eric Inch

As the competition heats up with new technology advancements and partnerships, VMware continues to look for ways to improve their industry leading (based on market share not necessarily on marketing lingo or personal opinion) Virtual Infrastructure product. In their latest release, called vSphere, they improve features for high availability.

VMware Fault Tolerance (FT) is integrated with VMware High Availability (HA) and allows for the failover of virtual machines (VM) without a loss in service.

Wait! Did I say no loss of service? How does that happen?

VMware FT provides continuous availability for workloads. A copy is created on another server in an HA cluster, one listed as primary and one secondary. If the primary VM fails, then the secondary takes over without downtime or loss of data. The continuous monitoring allows failures to be noticed instantaneously (translation: a few seconds) and the identical state is maintained through what is called vLockstep technology.

VMware vLockstep is the technology that ensures the primary and secondary VMs are always in synchronization. All events and transactions are replicated between the primary VM to the secondary VM. In the console of the secondary VM, you even have the ability to see all the events that have taken place in the primary VM. After the primary VM is determined to be offline (most likely due to hardware failure on the host), the secondary VM becomes the primary and another clone is created on a different server to become the secondary.

How awesome is that?!

VMware FT is amazing technology and will give customers more control over critical VMs than with traditional clustering solutions. It is good to see that VMware is continuing to push the innovation and not resting on their laurels.