Enable vSphere FT on a cluster to benefit from fault tolerance on a VM in a VMware vSphere 6.7 infrastructure

12. Test secondary reboot

When a virtual machine is protected by vSphere Fault Tolerance, you can cause the secondary virtual machine to restart (and recreate) on the same host (as the original secondary VM).
Which can be useful in the event of a problem with the secondary VM, for example.

For this test, we always have a main VM on our host "esxi1".

Our secondary VM is on our host "esxi3".

To do this test, go to the "Actions" menu of the main VM and click on: Fault Tolerance -> Test Restart Secondary.

A "Test secondary VM restart" task will appear at the bottom of the window and the usual Fault Tolerance error will appear on your primary VM page.

Currently our secondary VM is still "powered on" on our host "esxi3".

However, a little later, the Fault Tolerance status of your main virtual machine will change to "Unprotected" and this warning will be displayed:

Plain Text

Secondary VM required.
The virtual machine is powered on and has at least one secondary VM enabled, but no secondary VMs are currently active.

As you can see, the status of our secondary VM is now "Powered off".

The primary virtual machine continues to work properly.

As expected, your cluster tells you that a vSphere HA failover is in progress.

At the bottom of your primary VM page, you will see that the secondary VM is syncing with the primary VM.

Once the secondary VM is synchronized, the Fault Tolerance status will return to "Protected".

The secondary VM is therefore "Powered On" again.

The error and warning messages have disappeared from your cluster.

Our main virtual machine continues to run on our host "esxi1" as it was before.

Our secondary virtual machine is again on our host "esxi3" as it was before.

13. Shut down a virtual machine protected by Fault Tolerance

When you shut down a Fault Tolerance virtual machine, vSphere Fault Tolerance remains enabled on it (hence the VM icon remains blue).

At the bottom of the page, you will see that the Fault Tolerance status is "Unprotected" since this virtual machine is powered off.

Plain Text

VM inactive.
The virtual machine is not currently powered on, but has at least one secondary VM enabled.

As expected, the corresponding secondary virtual machine exists and is obviously "Powered Off".