2-node VSA and FOM - where should it live?

[Tedh256]

In a 2-node VSA cluster running on ESX5 - where should the FOM live?

The documentation clearly stresses that the FOM should NOT be on the shared storage - that it should be outside of the storage cluster all together.

But - this customer does not have another place to run it other than one of the hosts - so I put it on local storage.

What have other folks done in a two-node VSA like this? Just enabled the virtual manager, perhaps and not use a FOM at all? Or, remove the FOM before mainenance and then enable the virtual manager just temporarily?

Should I just insist in these situations that the customer install the vmware player somewhere, and run the FOM there? Does the vmware player WORK with the FOM?

[Bart_Heungens]

It is evident that the FOM should not be on the shared storage that it is protecting... Story of the chicken and the egg...

Best practice is to have it on a 3rd machine(can be laptop, desktop or server) with VMware player on it and hosting that FOM VM...

Virtual Manager is also a possibility but best practice there is to have it shut down in normal operations which means that you have to enable it manually when needed... When a node goes down unexpectedly on saturday night at 4 AM, you will have some downtime untill the moment that U start the Virtual Manager on the surviving node... This is the disadvantage of the Virtual Manager which is not the case when U use the FOM... He will keep everything running also at saturday night... ;-)

I have done several implementations already with FOM and VMplayer... Good solution...

Kr,

Bart

[Tedh256]

ok excellent

glad to hear that the FOM and player work. Though I suppose you cannot deploy the FOM from from OVF this way. I've not looked into it - is there a vmdk for the FOM that can just be pointed to, or is there a procedure for getting it configured for player?

Also - why is best practice not to run the virtual manager "all the time"? What could happen and/or what is the cost of doing so?

Thanx for sharing your experience!

[Bart_Heungens · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Just use the vmx file that goes together with the vmdk file and select Start inside VMplayer... Never used the ovf function for this one... I assume it doesnt even work in VMplayer, never tried it...

If U have 2 nodes and U start at all time the Virtual Manager on let's say the first node, and that node brakes for some reason, you are scrxxxx... You will never get the second node in quorum (majority) since it knows that the other node had majority...

There is some workaround within the CLI but to be honest U don't want to start with that... Except in real emergencies... But if you can/want avoid serious problems, do it and use the FOM...

[Mark Wibaux]

Another option we've used for sites is to implement the Hyper-V version of the FOM. Quite often we have a Windows Stroage Server running as the backup target for D2D backups. This is generally running Windows Storage Server 2008 which means that you can add the Hyper-V service to it.

Has the advantage of being fully automatic with starting up the VM if the server it is running on has to reboot.

[MattGGG]

Which version of Failover Manager should I use with VMware Player.  I tried importing the ESX OVF and it fails.  This FOM does not have a VMX file.

Thanks,

-Matt

[5y53ng]

Hi Matt,

The VMware Player will not recognize the OVF. Your best option is import the OVF to an ESX/ESXi server and then download it from the datastore to the client. You MIGHT need to use the VMware converter in this case. I have seen some virtual machines work fine in the player after downloading it from an ESX host, but other time it needed to be run through the converter.

Another option is you could use an older version (4.01) of the VMware converter to convert the OVF to a VMWare workstation machine. (compatible with player) I'm not sure why, but VMware removed the OVF option from version 4.03 of the player, but this is why I keep a copy of the older converter handy.