Vista - HA (High availability)

i understand the need for SAN box for virtualisation technology.

Assuming a site do not have a SAN box, but want to have HA, is the so-called
entry level Raid 1 sufficient ?

HA is hard to define precisely. RAID1 is disk mirroring, so if you lose one
of the 2 disks in a server, you can replace it and have the RAID controller
automatically rebuild it without any data loss. But when you need to
install hotfixes / WU patches on the host, you have to save all VMs and
reboot the physical host = downtime for all VMs. Some might not consider
this to be Highly Available.

This is where Failover Clustering shines...and wait until you see the next
version of Windows Server! :-)

Hope this helps,
--Ryan

--
Ryan Sokolowski
MVP - Clustering
MCT, MCITP x3, MCTS x7, MCSE x2, CCNA, CCDA, BCFP


"IT Staff" <jkklim@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:ugexbmAMJHA.3496@xxxxxx

On Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:46:38 -0700, "Ryan Sokolowski [MVP]"
<ryan@xxxxxx> wrote:
But, RAID 1 doesn't allow for the RAID controller to fail. If that
happens both disks are down...not really HA.

--
Cheers,
Steve Jain, Virtual Machine MVP
http://vpc.essjae.com/

Totally agree. But RAID level is the least of his concerns if he's trying
to have elements of HA in his Virtualization strategy...that's why I brought
up Patching and FC...a marriage made in heaven! :-)

--
Ryan Sokolowski
MVP - Clustering
MCT, MCITP x3, MCTS x7, MCSE x2, CCNA, CCDA, BCFP


"Steve Jain [MVP]" <noreply.-@-.essjae.com> wrote in message
news:r68if49c565nmdlitomkvijadm9k0aik7c@xxxxxx