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Is anyone aware what would happen if VMware ESXi is unable to start back up a secondary instance of a VM configured for fault tolerance? Is there a fallback plan to try and get the VM up? Or is the VM considered failed at this point?

Initially, when a VM is configured for FT, a secondary instance is created for it. When the primary fails, the secondary instance takes over to become the primary and another secondary instance is created for that one. When there is no more resources to create another secondary instance when x failures occur, is it correct to assume that the VM is failed at this point and nothing else can be done about it? Hope that is clearer.

Thanks for any insight!

Mark Henderson
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    I don't understand the question. An FT VM doesn't get restarted, it's always running. – joeqwerty Apr 10 '15 at 21:01
  • Initially, when a VM is configured for FT, a secondary instance is created for it. When the primary fails, the secondary instance takes over to become the primary and another secondary instance is created for that one. When there is no more resources to create another secondary instance when x failures occur, is it correct to assume that the VM is failed at this point and nothing else can be done about it? Hope that is clearer. Thanks! – O_O Apr 10 '15 at 21:14
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    OK, now I get what you're asking. When a failover occurs to the secondary instance what happens if there aren't enough resources to create a new secondary instance. Is that your question? If so, I don't have the answer but it's a good question. – joeqwerty Apr 10 '15 at 21:22
  • In short, yes. I'm thinking the VM is either considered failed or FT has something up its sleeve where it will do a last ditch effort to just restart the VM on the current host. I think it is the first outcome, but I'm not positive. – O_O Apr 10 '15 at 21:25
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    Based on [this question](http://serverfault.com/q/454919/7709) it looks like FT will be disabled for that guest, and you will need to manually re-enable it. But this is far from a tested/canonical answer so I'm not prepared to post it as an answer. – Mark Henderson Apr 10 '15 at 22:04

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