Release Notes

7 Configuring Dell Storage Manager for High Availability | 3272-BP-DSM
2 Host availability
Since the Data Collector services need to remain highly available, the hypervisor can be used to provide
additional protections for greater uptime.
2.1 VMware
When running the Data Collector virtual machine on VMware vSphere, there are several key features that can
protect the virtual machine.
2.1.1 vMotion
The VMware vSphere vMotion
®
feature allows the virtual machines to be migrated between physical hosts,
and is an important piece to provide proactive uptime. Should a VMware ESXi
™
host need maintenance,
vMotion can safely move the DSM virtual machines to another node in the cluster before a planned outage.
2.1.2 VMware vSphere High Availability (HA)
With regards to unplanned outages, VMware vSphere High Availability will protect the virtual machine from
host failures, as well as individual virtual machine failures. In the event either the host fails or the virtual
machine stops responding to heartbeats, it will be restarted on a different ESXi host in the cluster. When
using vSphere HA, the Data Collector downtime is limited to how long it takes the virtual machine to reboot on
a different host.
2.1.3 VMware vSphere Fault Tolerance (FT)
VMware vSphere Fault Tolerance increases uptime even further by statefully mirroring the virtual machine to
a separate ESXi host in the cluster. In the event of a failure, the virtual machine can resume operations
immediately, picking up where the previous virtual machine left off.
The use of VMware Fault Tolerance with vSphere 6.x is highly recommended to ensure that the DSM Data
Collector has the highest availability possible. Although vSphere 5.x also provides fault tolerance, to ensure
adequate performance of the Data Collector, the dual vCPU functionality of vSphere 6.x is required. When
utilizing VMware Fault Tolerance, the only expected downtime will be for operating system patching reboots
during the virtual machine’s regularly scheduled maintenance window.
2.2 Microsoft
The Microsoft Windows Server product line also has a number of technologies to provide high availability for
the DSM Data Collector and SQL database machines.
2.2.1 Microsoft failover clustering
Since the DSM Data Collector services by themselves are not cluster aware, traditional failover clustering
cannot be used. However, the DSM services can run within a virtual machine on Hyper-V, and leverage
Hyper-V failover clustering.