Q: What is the Fault Domain Manager in VMware vSphere 5.0?

A: In and among all its new features, vSphere 5.0 introduces a complete rewrite of vSphere HA clustering. Replacing its earlier technology for vSphere HA is a new host agent called the Fault Domain Manager, or FDM. This agent is responsible for monitoring host availability and the power state of protected VMs, with the mission of restarting protected VMs when a host or VM fails.