Does HA do anything more than automate what I could do manually?

[Threxx]

I'm comparing VSphere Essentials vs VSphere Essentials Plus.

As far as I can see there's really only two differences. HA and Data Recovery. Data Recovery seems nice but if I've already got a working backup solution and am using snapshots as needed, it would just be an extra layer of defense (not a bad thing, but not required).

But HA has me interested. It seems like all HA might be is a feature installed on each physical host that listens for the heartbeat of the other physical and if it doesn't hear it, it boots up those VMs off the shared storage. So assuming those VMs start up correctly on their own (which may not be the case after they just experienced an unplanned hard shut down), they'd be back up and running in as long as it takes them to boot back up on the other physical host.

Here's my question though... is this really any different than me going up to my VSphere management client and saying "oh look, one of my physical hosts went down, let me move those guest VMs over to the other physical host and boot them up."?... with the exception that I'd be doing all of this manually after I took notice that I have a server down, rather than it being done automatically in only a couple minutes?

For all I know you CAN'T move powered down machines manually from one host to the other in VSphere Essentials (non-plus)... which is why I ask.

I'm also wondering if HA offers any other features to further safeguard my data and make it to where I've got a better chance of getting the VM succesfully started without any corruption or data loss issues... or would I need the Fault Tolerance feature for that? If so... that's way out of my price range being that we're a smallish business.

Thanks!

[weinstein5]

Welcome to the Forums - you would need FT to insure no corruption or down time - It is not just simply startring up the V< on another host - since the V< will disconnected you will need to remove it form the VC inventory and readd it shich is automated by HA - in addtion with HA you can also monitor individua;l machines and have them restarted if they run into problems like being hung - but HA does not do anything to make sur ethe VM will restart it is a restart after a crash -

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[admin]

In addition to what David mentioned, HA can perform failovers without VC being up, so that avoids a potential single point of failure.

Elisha

[Threxx]

Thanks guys

While we're at it, does HA require or recommend the two hosts to have processors from the same generation/series? I'm not talking from a performance standpoint so much as I'm talking about from a feature standpoint. When I was looking at Hyper-V if one server had a Xeon 5600 series CPU and one had Xeon 5400 series, it could work, but the 5600 series had to have all features unique to it disabled... basically both processors had to meet at the lowest common denominator of features sets.

Also is there anything I will need to keep in mind when prepping my VSphere environment for HA if, to begin with, I'll only have one physical host? In other words are there any 'gotchas' I might encounter further down the line when I try to add the second host for HA because I didn't prep the environment for that feature from the onset?

Thanks!

[weinstein5]

With HA compatible processors is not a requirement because when HA occurs it is a restart of the VM so that when the O/S comes up it will recognize the CPU and adjust accordingly so you could even have a mix of AMD and Intel CPUs - where the compatibility of the physical CPUs is critical is when talking about VMotion this is where the CPUs need to be compatible and masked appropriately and since DRS has VMotion at its core it is critical for DRS as well and even more so with FT

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