Alternate ESX Host feature: automatic failover possible?

[Jason Dinsdale]

Hello,

I'm new to HP SIM (and the VMM plugin in particular) and would like to get clarification on how the 'Alternate ESX Host' feature works.

Reading the documentation I see that I can manually initiate a recovery of VMs to an alternate ESX server, but it's not clear whether this can be initiated automatically based on given events (ESX server down etc). If it is possible, how is it done?

Thanks,

Jason

[NEETI TOLIA]

Hi Jason,
No, this does not happen automatically but you have to instruct to do so by using the "Recover VM's to alternate host" item

[JasonD]

Neeti,

Thanks for your response. Do you use this feature yourself? Is it effective? I find it hard to understand how HP can introduce such a feature and *not* allow you to failover VMs to an alternate automatically based on critical events - after all isn't that one of the core features of SIM, event detection with automatic recovery actions?

Anyone from HP care to comment?

Jason

[NEETI TOLIA]

Yes Jason, I have used this feature and its really good. Now you dont have single point of failure as you can setup your environment to have alternate host which would take over the VM's of failed host. What's great about this feature is again you dont have to have 1 additional host available for all the VM's of a system but you could spread them across to multiple VM hosts. Its just great feature.