DRS configuration

[StephenPFrazier]

I have 2 racks with 4 HP blades running VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 in each rack. All 8 hosts are in a DRS cluster with "Fully Automated" level. Currently DRS will move VM's between hosts to ballance resources. For most of my VM's this is what I want. However I have 3 VM's that I would line to not move from one rack to the other. They can run on any of the 4 hosts in the rack but should not move to the 4 hosts in the other rack. How can I set DRS to tie a VM to a group of hosts?

[MauroBonder]

you can set groups in Edit Settings of Cluster > DRS Groups Manager > Hosts DRS Groups.

DRS group manager is used for VM-host affinity. You can create VM group and set rule to place these VMs on some hosts.

[a_p_]

I don't have access to my test environment at the moment, however you should be able to achieve this by setting up DRS host affinity/anti-affinity rules. Make sure you define MUST rules if you want to prevent HA from powering on the VM's on the other blade enclosure.

André

[Dave_Mishchenko · Accepted solution]

You can create a DRS rule for this.  Here are the steps.

Edit the settings for the DRS cluster and then:
1) On the DRS Groups Manager screen create a new host DRS group with the hosts that the VM should run on and a new VM DRS Group containing the VMs.
2) On the Rules screen create a new Virtual Machines to Hosts rule.  Select the VM and Host group and the option "Must run on hosts in group".