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| About ApplicationHA-initiated virtual machine restart | ||
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When you configure application monitoring, ApplicationHA uses heartbeat to communicate the application status to VMware HA. If the application or its component fails, ApplicationHA attempts to restart it. If the application does not start, ApplicationHA stops sending the heartbeat. Depending on the configuration, VMware HA then restarts the virtual machine instantaneously.
A hard restart has various implications and may not be the desired solution at all times. It may prove to be counter productive in several cases, including the following:
The virtual machine itself is running fine but the application is unable to get the required resources
The other applications and tools running on the machine may either hang or take longer time to recover or restart after an abrupt shut down
A hard restart can be potentially disruptive if there are multiple critical applications running on the virtual machine
ApplicationHA provides another layer of application control wherein you can configure ApplicationHA itself to restart the virtual machine using native operating system commands. An operating system driven restart is graceful and allows for a more orderly shut down of applications and tools running on the machine and can help reduce potential disruption to critical applications.
ApplicationHA provides attributes that you can use to configure ApplicationHA to restart the virtual machine.
See Administering application monitoring settings.
ApplicationHA-initiated reboot works independently of VMware HA functionality. It is not intended to replace VMware HA. It is useful in cases where there is a need to first bring down other healthy applications and dependent components before actually restarting the virtual machine and also in VMware virtualization environments where VMware HA is not available.
ApplicationHA-initiated reboot complements VMware HA by offering an additional layer of control that helps in building customized application management and recovery plans in virtualization environments. ApplicationHA-initiated reboot can co-exist with VMware HA. You can configure both ApplicationHA-initiated reboot and VMware HA as part of your recovery plan. ApplicationHA-initiated reboot can act as the first line of action against application failures. If a graceful restart does not resolve the application failures, then depending on the reboot configuration settings, ApplicationHA stops the application heartbeat and VMware HA then takes control of the virtual machine.