VMware vSphere Fault Tolerance (FT) provides continuous availability for applications (with up to four virtual CPUs) by creating a live shadow instance of a virtual machine that mirrors the primary virtual machine. If a hardware outage occurs, vSphere FT automatically triggers failover to eliminate downtime and prevent data loss.
After failover, vSphere FT automatically creates a new, secondary virtual machine to deliver continuous protection for the application.
vSphere Fault Tolerance safeguards any virtual machine (with up to four virtual CPUs), including homegrown and custom applications that traditional high-availability products cannot protect. Key capabilities include the following:
vSphere FT can safeguard any number of virtual machines in a cluster because it leverages existing vSphere HA clusters. Administrators can start or stop vSphere FT for specific virtual machines with a point-and-click action in the vSphere web client. Use vSphere FT for applications that require continuous protection during critical times, such as quarter-end processing.