Interesting solution for VMware View Failover Automation done by vCenter Orchestrator took my attention. The solution is interesting because it does not use VMware SRM usually used for site failovers, but it uses vCenter Orchestrator workflows only. The VMware Horizon View Failover Automation solution has been built by ByteLife and allows automated failover of virtual desktops between sites.
The solution is rather unique, where you have two distant locations and in each location you have installed vCenter, vSphere cluster, View connection server(s) – replica servers and of course you have storage array which uses remote replication. This is what VMware calls a POD. VMware recommends as a best practice for Horizon View deployments needing several remote locations, using PODs. You can read good post by VMware here concerning large scale Horizon View deployments.
Each POD must be connected to the other site by low latency links (less than 5ms). View connection servers are configured as replica servers and are replicate to each other (and also to other sites, if any). They share configuration and doing the syncing of all changes between sites. The solution supports more than 2 remote sites.
There is a technical PDF (well explained) and a demo video of the solution. See the resources section of this post.
Key points of the solution:
- Persistent (full) desktop protection
- Non-persistent (linked clones) desktop protection
- Failover desktop pools and virtual machines in case of site crash
- Migrate desktop pools and virtual machines during maintenance, tests, rebalancing the load between sites or as the failback after disaster
- Restore storage synchronization between datacenters after the outage Integration with vSphere WebClient
What's necessary actions in surviving site?
- Promote the storage
- Register and power up VMware Persona server
- Enable user access
- Create and/or power up linked clone desktops
- Register and power up persistent desktops
Video:
Resources:
Links:
- Technical PDF of the solution
- ByteLife website – https://www.bytelife.com/view-failover-automation/
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Hi
Where is the PDF
thanks
Hello
I am interested in this as well, but the pdf link is not working, and there are no pointers to it on the Bytelife web site. Do you know if this solution still exists?
Thank you
You may want to get in touch with some folks from Bytelife, it it still exists. I was just a messenger, when I wrote the post, back in a day. So I have no idea what has happened to this solution. Sorry about that. Janek Gridin was the man if I remember right… https://twitter.com/JanekGridin