Description:

VMware Fault Tolerance (FT) is a feature available with VMware vSphere 4 (i.e., ESX 4 and vCenter Server 4) that allows a virtual machine to continue running even when the underlying physical server fails. It is a software solution that runs on commodity hardware and does not require any modifications to the guest operating system or applications running inside the virtual machine. This paper gives a brief overview of how VMware FT works and provides a list of requirements. The paper also describes several usage scenarios along with application and reliability recommendations. Finally, a summary of performance recommendations is included.