11.2. Implementing VMware High Availability

High availability has been an industry buzzword that has stood the test of time. The need and/or desire for high availability is often a significant component to any infrastructure design. Within the scope of an ESX/ESXi host, VMware High Availability (HA) is a component of the vSphere 4 product that provides for the automatic failover of virtual machines. But—and it's a big but at this point in time—HA does not provide high availability in the traditional sense of the term. Commonly, HA means the automatic failover of a service or application to another server.

11.2.1. Understanding HA

The VMware HA feature provides an automatic restart of the virtual machines that were running on an ESX/ESXi host ...

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