Turn on vSphere FT for FOM

[Jason Ng Teng Po]

Hi all,

I trying to eliminate a 3rd site for putting the FOM.

I have the following setup in my environment

2 node manager p4300 (configured cluster and present a 2-way volume to 2x ESXi)

2 node ESXi (configured as HA)

I was wondering is it possible to put the FOM virtual machine in my vSphere HA environment and turn on FT? I read that the FOM only needs 1 vCPU

That way the FOM will still be up and running together with the 2nd manager node to achieve the quorum.

[Jason Ng Teng Po]

Sorry I forgot to mentioned that.....

each p4300 node and ESXi host wil be in a different server room. So we are trying to simulate a room failover.

[Paul Miano]

If you do not have a third site, then you would want to load the FOM on local storage on either if your ESX(i) hosts -  or another ESXi server - the free version would suffice, it just could not be managed by VC. Since FT requires HA and therefore shared storage, this is not an option for you. As I mentioned, a separate server with ESXi free and only running your FOM could function as a "logical" third site. The recommendation would be to use separate power if available from your SAN/ESX(i) nodes. Regardless your FOM should never be loaded on your SAN (really defeats the purpose) and FT would not be an option.