Duncan Epping of VMware and Yellow-Bricks has posted a nice write up on running VMware on a NetApp MetroCluster with VM-Host Affinity Rules (new in vSphere 4.1). In summary this new capability allows one to restrict the boundaries of HA capabilities to a limited number of ESX/ESXi hosts within a HA cluster for a set of VMs.
As you may imagine, this works very well when your cluster is stretched across two data centers which are 100 kms apart.
For more details, I’d suggest you check out Duncan’s article over at Yellow-Bricks.
If you need more of a primer on VM-Host Affinity, I’d suggest you hit Frank Denneman‘s blog as he has a crafted a great post on this technology which some may find useful to read prior to heading over to Yellow-Bricks.
If you are looking for more information on running vSphere on a MetroCluster, please see TR-3788 written by Larry Touchette.
Thanks VCDX007 & VCDX029 for sharing this info!
If you found this article valuable, consider sharing...
Vaughn is a VP of Systems Engineering at VAST Data. He helps organizations capitalize on what’s possible from VAST’s Universal Storage in a multitude of environments including A.I. & deep learning, data analytics, animation & VFX, media & broadcast, health & life sciences, data protection, etc. He spent 23 years in various leadership roles at Pure Storage and NetApp, and has been awarded a U.S. patent.
Vaughn strives to simplify the technically complex and advocates thinking outside the box. You can find his perspective online at vaughnstewart.com and in print; he’s coauthored multiple books including “Virtualization Changes Everything: Storage Strategies for VMware vSphere & Cloud Computing“.
