Deploying and

Configuring vSphere
Clusters

© 2022 VMware, Inc.

Importance
Most organizations rely on computer-based services such as email, databases, and web-based
applications. The failure of these services can mean lost productivity and revenue.
By understanding and using vSphere HA, you can configure highly available, computer-based
services, which are important for an organization to remain competitive in contemporary
business environments. And by developing skills in using vSphere DRS, you can improve
service levels by guaranteeing appropriate resources to virtual machines.

© 2022 VMware, Inc. M09_Deploying and Configuring vSphere Clusters | 1-2

Module Lessons
1. vSphere Clusters Overview
2. vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler
3. Introduction to vSphere High Availability
4. vSphere High Availability Architecture
5. Configuring vSphere High Availability

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vSphere Clusters Overview

© 2019 VMware Inc. All rights reserved.

Learner Objectives
• Create a vSphere cluster
• Recognize cluster options that you can configure with Cluster Quickstart
• View information about a vSphere cluster

© 2022 VMware, Inc. M09_Deploying and Configuring vSphere Clusters | 1-5

About vSphere Clusters
A cluster is used in vSphere to share physical
resources between a group of ESXi hosts.
vCenter manages cluster resources as a single
pool of resources.
You can create one or more clusters based on
the purpose each cluster must fulfill, for
example:
• Management
• Production
• Compute
A cluster can contain up to 96 ESXi hosts.

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Creating a vSphere Cluster
You can create a cluster by giving it a name and selecting the relevant cluster services.

© 2022 VMware, Inc. M09_Deploying and Configuring vSphere Clusters | 1-7

About Cluster Quickstart
After you create a cluster, you can use the Cluster Quickstart workflow to configure the cluster.

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Cluster Quickstart: Activating Services
The first step in the Cluster Quickstart workflow is to check that the correct cluster services are
selected.

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Cluster Quickstart: Adding Hosts
The second step in the Cluster Quickstart workflow is to add new or existing hosts to the
cluster.

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Cluster Quickstart: Configuring the Cluster
The third step is to configure the host networking settings and customize cluster services.

© 2022 VMware, Inc. M09_Deploying and Configuring vSphere Clusters | 1 - 11

Configuring a Cluster: Distributed Switches
To configure a cluster, you can:
• Select up to three
distributed switches.
• Select a network for
vSphere vMotion.
• Select at least one physical
adapter.
You can also configure
networking settings later.

© 2022 VMware, Inc. M09_Deploying and Configuring vSphere Clusters | 1 - 12

Configuring a Cluster: vSAN and vMotion Traffic
If you selected vSphere DRS,
you are prompted to enter the
IP address information for the
vSphere vMotion network.
If you selected vSAN, you are
prompted to enter the IP
information for the vSAN
network.

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Configuring a Cluster: Advanced Options
You get different settings
depending on the cluster
services that are enabled:
• High Availability (optional)
• Distributed Resource
Scheduler (optional)
• Host Options
• Enhanced vMotion
Compatibility

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Viewing Cluster Summary Information
The Summary tab provides a quick view of information about a cluster's resources and its
consumers.

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Monitoring Cluster Resources
You can view CPU and memory allocation details.

© 2022 VMware, Inc.

Memory statistics for the cluster M09_Deploying and Configuring vSphere Clusters | 1 - 16
vSphere Cluster Services VMs
Up to three vSphere Cluster Service VMs are present in each vSphere cluster.
These VMs are required for maintaining the health and availability of cluster services such as
vSphere DRS and vSphere HA.

© 2022 VMware, Inc. M09_Deploying and Configuring vSphere Clusters | 1 - 17

Review of Learner Objectives
• Create a vSphere cluster
• Recognize cluster options that you can configure with Cluster Quickstart
• View information about a vSphere cluster

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vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler

© 2019 VMware Inc. All rights reserved.

Learner Objectives
• Describe the functions of a vSphere DRS cluster
• Explain how vSphere DRS determines VM placement on hosts in the cluster
• Recognize use cases for vSphere DRS settings
• Configure vSphere DRS in a cluster
• Monitor a vSphere DRS cluster

© 2022 VMware, Inc. M09_Deploying and Configuring vSphere Clusters | 1 - 20

About vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler
vSphere Distributed Resource
Scheduler (DRS) helps to
improve resource allocation
across all hosts in a cluster.
vSphere DRS use cases:
• Initial placement when a VM
is powered on
• Load balancing
• Migrating VMs when an ESXi
host is placed in
maintenance mode

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vSphere DRS: VM Focused
vSphere DRS is VM focused:
• While the VM is powered on, vSphere DRS operates on an individual VM basis by ensuring
that each VM's resource requirements are met.
• vSphere DRS calculates a score for each VM and gives recommendations (or migrates VMs)
for meeting VM's resource requirements.

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About the VM DRS Score
The VM DRS score tracks how well a VM's resource requirements are met.
• Scores closer to 0% indicate severe resource contention.
• Scores closer to 100% indicate mild to no resource contention.

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VM DRS Score List
The cluster's Monitor tab lists the VM DRS Score and more detailed metrics for all the VMs in
the cluster.

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vSphere DRS Cluster Requirements
ESXi hosts that are added to a vSphere DRS cluster must meet certain requirements to use
cluster features successfully:
• To use vSphere DRS for load balancing, the hosts in your cluster must be part of a vSphere
vMotion network:
– If the hosts are not part of a vSphere vMotion network, vSphere DRS can still make initial
placement recommendations.
– vSphere DRS works best if the VMs meet vSphere vMotion requirements.
• Configure all managed hosts to use shared storage.

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vSphere DRS Settings: Automation Level
You can configure the automation level for the initial placement of VMs and for dynamic
balancing while VMs are running.

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vSphere DRS Settings: Migration Threshold
The migration threshold determines how aggressively vSphere DRS selects to migrate VMs.

© 2022 VMware, Inc. M09_Deploying and Configuring vSphere Clusters | 1 - 27

vSphere DRS Settings: Predictive DRS
Predictive DRS is used to predict future
demand and determine when and where high
resource utilization occurs.
To make predictive decisions, the vSphere DRS
data collector retrieves the following data:
• Resource usage statistics from ESXi hosts
• Predicted usage statistics from the VMware
Aria Operations server
Goals of Predictive DRS:
• Move VMs before their DRS score drops.
• Perform migrations before host resources
are in contention.

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Viewing vSphere DRS Settings
When you click VIEW DRS
SETTINGS, the main vSphere
DRS parameters and their
current values are shown.
vSphere DRS settings include:
• Automation level
• Migration threshold

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vSphere DRS Settings: VM-Level Automation
You can customize the automation level for individual VMs in a cluster to override the
automation level set on the entire cluster.

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vSphere DRS Settings: VM Swap File Location
ESXi hosts can be configured to place VM swap files on a local datastore.
If vSphere DRS is configured, you should place the VM swap files on a shared datastore.

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vSphere DRS Settings: VM Affinity
vSphere DRS virtual machine
affinity rules specify that
selected VMs be placed either
on the same host or on
separate hosts:
• Affinity rules: For VMs that
communicate heavily with
one another
• Anti-affinity rules: For VMs
where load balancing or
high availability is desired.

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vSphere DRS Settings: DRS Groups
VM groups and host groups are used in
defining VM-Host affinity rules.
The VM-Host affinity rule specifies whether a
VM can or cannot be run on a host.
Types of groups:
• VM group: One or more VMs
• Host group: One or more ESXi hosts
A VM can belong to multiple VM groups.
A host can belong to multiple host groups.

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vSphere DRS Settings: VM-Host Affinity Rules
A VM-Host affinity rule:
• Defines an affinity (or anti-affinity)
relationship between a VM group and a host
group
• Is either a required rule or a preferential
rule
Rule options:
• Must run on hosts in group
• Should run on hosts in group
• Must not run on hosts in group
• Should not run on hosts in group

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VM-Host Affinity Preferential Rules
A preferential rule is softly enforced and can be violated if necessary.
Example: Separate VMs on different blade systems for improved performance.

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VM-Host Affinity Required Rules
A required rule is strictly enforced and can never be violated.
Example: Enforce host-based ISV licensing.

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Viewing vSphere DRS Cluster Resource Utilization
From the cluster's Monitor tab, you can view CPU, memory, and network utilization per host.

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Viewing vSphere DRS Recommendations
Select Recommendations to display information about the vSphere DRS recommendations
made for the cluster.

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Maintenance Mode and Standby Mode
Maintenance mode:
• Should be used to service a host in a cluster
• Makes the host's resources unavailable for use
Standby mode:
• Is used by vSphere DPM to optimize power usage. When a
host is placed in standby mode, it is powered off.

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Removing a Host from the vSphere DRS Cluster
To remove a host from a cluster:
1. Place the host in maintenance mode.
– All running VMs on the host must be migrated to another host, shut down or suspended.
– If DRS is in fully automated mode, powered-on VMs are automatically migrated from a
host that is placed in maintenance mode.
2. Drag the host to a different inventory location, for example, the data center or another
cluster.
The resources available for the cluster decrease.

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Lab 1: Implementing vSphere DRS Clusters
Create a vSphere DRS cluster, use Cluster Quickstart to perform the basic configuration, and
verify proper vSphere DRS functionality:
1. Create a Cluster That Is Configured for vSphere DRS
2. Verify vSphere vMotion Configuration on the ESXi Hosts
3. Add ESXi Hosts to the Cluster
4. Modify vSphere DRS Settings
5. Power On VMs and Review vSphere DRS Recommendations
6. Review vSphere DRS Recommendations When the Cluster Is Imbalanced

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Review of Learner Objectives
• Describe the functions of a vSphere DRS cluster
• Explain how vSphere DRS determines VM placement on hosts in the cluster
• Recognize use cases for vSphere DRS settings
• Configure vSphere DRS in a cluster
• Monitor a vSphere DRS cluster

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Introduction to vSphere High Availability

© 2019 VMware Inc. All rights reserved.

Learner Objectives
• Describe how vSphere HA responds to various types of failures
• Describe how vSphere HA responds to network isolation
• Identify options for configuring network redundancy in a vSphere HA cluster

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Protection at Every Level
With vSphere, you can reduce planned downtime, prevent unplanned downtime, and recover
rapidly from outages.

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About vSphere HA
vSphere High Availability (HA) provides rapid recovery from outages and cost-effective high
availability for applications running in VMs. vSphere HA protects application availability in
several ways.

Protects Against How Does vSphere HA Provide Protection?

ESXi host failure By restarting the VMs on other hosts within the cluster
VM failure By restarting the VM when a VMware Tools heartbeat is not
received within a set time
Application failure By restarting the VM when an application heartbeat is not
received within a set time
Datastore accessibility failure By restarting the affected VMs on other hosts that still can
access the datastores.
Network isolation By restarting VMs if their host becomes isolated on
the heartbeat network. This protection is provided
even if the network becomes partitioned.
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vSphere HA Scenario: ESXi Host Failure
When a host fails, vSphere HA restarts the impacted VMs on other hosts in the cluster.

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vSphere HA Scenario: Guest Operating System Failure
When a VM stops sending heartbeats or the VM process (vmx) fails unexpectedly, vSphere HA
restarts the VM on the same host.

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vSphere HA Scenario: Application Failure
When an application stops sending heartbeats, vSphere HA restarts the impacted VM on the
same host.

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vSphere HA Scenario: Datastore Accessibility Failures
vSphere HA can detect datastore accessibility failures and provide automated recovery for
affected VMs.
You can determine the response that vSphere HA makes to such a failure:
• All paths down (APD):
– Recoverable.
– Represents a transient or unknown accessibility loss.
– Response can be either Issue events, Power off and restart VMs – Conservative
restart policy, or Power off and restart VMs – Aggressive restart policy.
• Permanent device loss (PDL):
– Unrecoverable loss of accessibility.
– Occurs when a storage device reports that the datastore is no longer accessible by the
host.
– Response can be either Issue events or Power off and restart VMs.

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Importance of Heartbeat Networks
A heartbeat network is implemented by using
a VMkernel port that is marked for
management or vSAN traffic.
Heartbeats have the following characteristics:
• They are sent between the primary host and
the secondary hosts.
• They are used to determine whether a
primary host or a secondary host has failed.
• They are sent over a heartbeat network.
When both vSAN and vSphere HA are
activated on the cluster, vSphere HA uses the
vSAN network as the heartbeat network
instead of the management network.

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vSphere HA Scenario: Protecting VMs Against Network Isolation
vSphere HA restarts VMs if their host is isolated on the management or vSAN network.
Host network isolation occurs when a host is still running, but it can no longer observe traffic
from the vSphere HA agents on the heartbeat network.

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Heartbeat Network Redundancy Using NIC Teaming
Redundant heartbeat networks ensure reliable failure detection and minimize the chance of
host-isolation scenarios.
You can use NIC teaming to create a redundant heartbeat network on ESXi hosts.

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Heartbeat Network Redundancy Using Additional Networks
You can create redundancy by
configuring additional
heartbeat networks.
For example, create a second
VMkernel port in a port group
on a separate virtual switch
with its own physical adapter.

© 2022 VMware, Inc. M09_Deploying and Configuring vSphere Clusters | 1 - 54

Review of Learner Objectives
• Describe how vSphere HA responds to various types of failures
• Describe how vSphere HA responds to network isolation
• Identify options for configuring network redundancy in a vSphere HA cluster

© 2022 VMware, Inc. M09_Deploying and Configuring vSphere Clusters | 1 - 55

vSphere HA Architecture

© 2019 VMware Inc. All rights reserved.

Learner Objectives
• Identify the heartbeat mechanisms used by vSphere HA
• Describe failure scenarios
• Recognize vSphere HA design considerations

© 2022 VMware, Inc. M09_Deploying and Configuring vSphere Clusters | 1 - 57

vSphere HA Architecture: Agent Communication
When vSphere HA is
configured in a cluster, the
Fault Domain Manager (FDM)
service is uploaded to each
host in the cluster and started.
The FDM service is also known
as the vSphere HA agent.

© 2022 VMware, Inc. M09_Deploying and Configuring vSphere Clusters | 1 - 58

vSphere HA Architecture: Network Heartbeats
The primary host sends
periodic heartbeats to the
secondary hosts.
In this way, the secondary
hosts know that the primary
host is alive, and the primary
host knows that the secondary
hosts are alive.

© 2022 VMware, Inc. M09_Deploying and Configuring vSphere Clusters | 1 - 59

vSphere HA Architecture: Datastore Heartbeats
When the primary host cannot
communicate with a secondary
host over the heartbeat
network, the primary host uses
datastore heartbeating to
determine the cause:
• Secondary host failure
• Network partition
• Network isolation

© 2022 VMware, Inc. M09_Deploying and Configuring vSphere Clusters | 1 - 60

vSphere HA Failure Scenarios
vSphere HA can identify and respond to various types of failures:
• Secondary host failure
• Primary host failure
• Network failure (host isolation)
• Datastore accessibility failures:
– APD
– PDL

© 2022 VMware, Inc. M09_Deploying and Configuring vSphere Clusters | 1 - 61

Failed Secondary Hosts
When a secondary host does not respond to the network heartbeat issued by the primary host,
the primary host tries to identify the cause.

© 2022 VMware, Inc. M09_Deploying and Configuring vSphere Clusters | 1 - 62

Failed Primary Hosts
When the primary host is placed in maintenance mode or fails, the secondary hosts detect that
the primary host is no longer issuing heartbeats.

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Isolated Hosts
A host is declared isolated
when both the following
conditions occur:
• The host does not receive
network heartbeats.
• The host cannot ping its
isolation addresses.
When a host identifies itself as
isolated, it executes the
cluster's isolation response.

© 2022 VMware, Inc. M09_Deploying and Configuring vSphere Clusters | 1 - 64

VM Storage Failures
Storage connectivity problems might arise
because of:
• Network or switch failure
• Array misconfiguration
• Power outage
Storage connectivity problems affect VM
availability:
• VMs on affected hosts are difficult to
manage.
• Applications with attached disks fail.

© 2022 VMware, Inc. M09_Deploying and Configuring vSphere Clusters | 1 - 65

Protecting Against Storage Failures with VMCP
VM Component Protection protects against storage failures on a VM.
With VMCP, vSphere HA can detect datastore accessibility failures and provide automated
recovery for affected VMs.

© 2022 VMware, Inc. M09_Deploying and Configuring vSphere Clusters | 1 - 66

vSphere HA Design Considerations
When designing your vSphere HA cluster, consider these guidelines:
• Implement redundant heartbeat networks and redundant isolation addresses:
– Redundancy minimizes host isolation events.
• Physically separate VM networks from the heartbeat networks.
• Implement datastores so that they are separated from the heartbeat network by using one
or both of the following approaches:
– Use Fibre Channel over fiber optic for your datastores.
– If you use IP storage, physically separate your IP storage network from the heartbeat
network.

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Review of Learner Objectives
• Identify the heartbeat mechanisms used by vSphere HA
• Describe failure scenarios
• Recognize vSphere HA design considerations

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Configuring vSphere HA

© 2019 VMware Inc. All rights reserved.

Learner Objectives
• Recognize the requirements for creating and using a vSphere HA cluster
• Recognize the use cases for various vSphere HA settings
• Recognize when to use vSphere Fault Tolerance
• Configure a vSphere HA cluster

© 2022 VMware, Inc. M09_Deploying and Configuring vSphere Clusters | 1 - 70

vSphere HA Prerequisites
To create a vSphere HA cluster, you must meet several requirements:
• All hosts must be configured with static IP addresses. If you are using DHCP, the address
must persist across host reboots.
• All hosts must have at least one heartbeat network in common.
• For VM monitoring to work, VMware Tools must be installed in every VM.
• You must not exceed the maximum number of hosts that are allowed in a cluster.
See VMware Configuration Maximums at [Link]

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Configuring vSphere HA Settings
When you create or configure
a vSphere HA cluster, you
must configure settings that
determine how the feature
works.

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vSphere HA Settings: Failures and Responses
You use the Failures and
responses pane to configure a
cluster’s response if a failure
occurs.

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vSphere HA Setting: Default VM Restart Priority
The VM restart priority determines the order in
which vSphere HA restarts VMs on a running
host.
VMs are assigned the Medium restart priority
by default, unless the restart priority is
explicitly set using VM overrides.

© 2022 VMware, Inc. M09_Deploying and Configuring vSphere Clusters | 1 - 74

vSphere HA Settings: VM-Level Restart Priority
You can customize the restart priority for individual VMs in a cluster to override the default
level set for the entire cluster.

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About vSphere HA Orchestrated Restart
Orchestrated restart is an alternative to using the VM restart priority settings for vSphere HA.
With orchestrated restart, you define the order in which the VMs restart, which is useful when
services must be started in a particular order.
A common use case is for restarting a three-tier application.

© 2022 VMware, Inc. M09_Deploying and Configuring vSphere Clusters | 1 - 76

Orchestrated Restart In Action
vSphere HA restarts VMs only from a failed host. Configure affinity rules to keep VMs on the
same host if necessary.

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Configuring Orchestrated Restart
To configure an orchestrated restart:
1. Create VM groups for each of the VMs or VM category.
2. Create VM rules (of type Virtual Machines to Virtual Machines) to define the VM restart
dependencies.

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vSphere HA Settings: VM Monitoring
You use VM Monitoring settings
to control the monitoring of
VMs and applications.
By default, VM and Application
Monitoring is set to Disabled.

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vSphere HA Settings: Admission Control
vCenter uses admission
control to ensure the following:
• Sufficient resources are
available in a cluster to
provide failover protection.
• VM resource reservations
are respected.
Admission control settings:
• Disabled
• Slot Policy
• Cluster Resource Percentage
(default)
• Dedicated Failover Hosts

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Example: Admission Control Using Cluster Resources Percentage
Example of calculating total failover capacity
using cluster resource percentages:
• Total cluster capacity:
– CPU: 18 GHz
– Memory: 24 GB
• Total VM reservations:
– CPU: 7 GHz
– Memory: 6 GB
• Current failover CPU capacity is 61%:
((18 GHz - 7 GHz)/18 GHz) = 61%
• Current failover memory capacity is 75%:
((24 GB - 6 GB)/24 GB) = 75%

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Example: Admission Control Using Slots (1)
A slot is calculated by combining the largest
memory reservation and the largest CPU
reservation of any running VM in the cluster.
vSphere HA performs admission control by
calculating the following values:
• Slot size:
– In this example, the slot size is 2 GHz CPU
and 2 GB memory.
• Number of slots each host in the cluster can
hold:
– Three
– The cluster has a total of nine slots (3 + 3
+ 3).

© 2022 VMware, Inc. M09_Deploying and Configuring vSphere Clusters | 1 - 82

Example: Admission Control Using Slots (2)
vSphere HA also calculates the current failover capacity. In this example, the failover capacity
is one host:

• If the first host fails, six slots remain in the

cluster, which is sufficient for all five of the
powered-on VMs.
• If the first and second hosts fail, only three
slots remain, which is insufficient for all five
of the VMs.
• If the current failover capacity is less than
the configured failover capacity, vSphere
HA does not allow any more VMs to power
on.

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vSphere HA Settings: Performance Degradation VMs Tolerate
The Performance degradation VMs tolerate threshold specifies the percentage of
performance degradation that the VMs in the cluster are allowed to tolerate during a failure.

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vSphere HA Settings: Heartbeat Datastores
A heartbeat file is created on
the selected datastores and is
used if the heartbeat network
fails.
Heartbeat datastores:
• VMFS
• NFS
• vSphere Virtual Volumes
A vSAN datastore cannot be
used for datastore
heartbeating.

© 2022 VMware, Inc. M09_Deploying and Configuring vSphere Clusters | 1 - 85

vSphere HA Settings: Advanced Options
You can set advanced vSphere HA options to customize vSphere HA behavior.

Description Option Value

Force a cluster not to use the [Link] false
default isolation address
(default gateway).
Force a cluster to ping [Link] IP address or FQDN
alternate isolation addresses.
Force a cluster to wait [Link] >=30 seconds
beyond the default 30-second
isolation action window.
Force maximum bound on [Link] 100
the memory slot size.
Force maximum bound on [Link] 32
the CPU slot size.

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Network Configuration and Maintenance
Deactivate host monitoring
before modifying virtual
networking components that
involve the VMkernel ports
configured for management or
vSAN traffic.
This practice prevents
unwanted attempts to fail over
VMs.

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Monitoring vSphere HA Cluster Status
You can monitor the status of a vSphere HA cluster on the Summary page of the Monitor tab.

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Using vSphere HA with vSphere DRS
vSphere HA is closely integrated with vSphere DRS:
• When a failover occurs, vSphere HA checks whether resources are available on each host for
the failover.
• If resources are not available, vSphere HA asks vSphere DRS to accommodate for the VMs
where possible.

vSphere HA might not be able to fail over VMs for the following reasons:
• vSphere HA admission control is deactivated, and resources are insufficient in the remaining
hosts to power on all the failed VMs.

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About vSphere Fault Tolerance
vSphere Fault Tolerance protects mission-critical, high-performance applications regardless of
the operating system used.

vSphere Fault Tolerance provides

instantaneous failover and continuous
availability:
• Zero downtime
• Zero data loss
• No loss of VM network connectivity

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vSphere Fault Tolerance Checkpointing
Changes on the primary VM are note processed on the secondary VM. The memory is updated
on the secondary VM.

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vSphere Fault Tolerance with vSphere HA and vSphere DRS
vSphere HA and vSphere DRS
are vSphere Fault Tolerance
aware:
• vSphere HA is required for
vSphere Fault Tolerance.
• vSphere DRS:
– Selects which hosts run
the primary and
secondary VM, when a VM
is powered on
– Does not automatically
migrate fault-tolerant VMs

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vSphere Fault Tolerance Features
vSphere Fault Tolerance:
• Supports VMs configured with up to 8 vCPUs and 128 GB memory
• Supports up to four fault-tolerant VMs per host with no more than eight vCPUs between
them
• Supports vSphere vMotion migration for primary and secondary VMs
• Creates a secondary copy of all VM files and disks
• Supports multiple VM disk formats:
– Thin provision
– Thick provision lazy-zeroed
– Thick provision eager-zeroed
• Supports interoperability with vSAN
• Provides fast checkpoint copying to keep primary and secondary VMs synchronized

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Configuring vSphere Fault Tolerance on a VM
You can turn on vSphere Fault
Tolerance for a VM using the
vSphere Client.

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Lab 2: Configuring vSphere HA
Configure vSphere HA and test its functionality:
1. Configure vSphere HA in a Cluster
2. View Information About the vSphere HA Cluster
3. Configure Network Management Redundancy
4. Test the vSphere HA Functionality
5. View the vSphere HA Cluster Resource Usage
6. Configure the Percentage of Resource Degradation to Tolerate

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Review of Learner Objectives
• Recognize the requirements for creating and using a vSphere HA cluster
• Recognize the use cases for various vSphere HA settings
• Recognize when to use vSphere Fault Tolerance
• Configure a vSphere HA cluster

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Key Points
• When you create a cluster, you can configure vSphere DRS, vSphere HA, vSAN, and the
ability to manage image updates on all hosts collectively.
• vSphere DRS clusters provide automated resource management to ensure that VMs'
resource requirements are satisfied.
• vSphere DRS works best when the VMs meet vSphere vMotion migration requirements.
• vSphere HA protects against various types of failures: host, guest OS, application, datastore
accessibility, and network isolation.
• You implement redundant heartbeat networks either with NIC teaming or by creating
additional heartbeat networks.
• vSphere Fault Tolerance provides zero downtime for applications that must always be
available.
Questions?

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