Disabling DRS for an specific VM (atypically)

[DavidDAVE]

Hi there everybody,

I'm trying to achieve having some VMs with VMotion disabled, so I used frankdenneman.nl tips (disabling powered ON vmotion permissions), but I dont want the system moving them with DRS, so I disabled DRS automation level for them. But now I'm worried about my anti-affinity rule, defined to avoid this VMs running in the same ESXi... is this rule also disabled when i mark the VM as disabled in the "DRS - Virtual Machine Options (automation level)" tab?

I'm asking this specific question because I'm afraid of what's going to happen if one of the involved ESXi cracks. Will HA consider the DRS affinity rule of those VMs, keeping them in separate hosts, once it starts restarting machines? The wording "automation level" makes me guess that I only disable the auto-vmotioning, but not the affinity rule for deploying the VM in a new hosts, but.... not sure at all.

A possible solution would be disabling HA on those VMs, to get sure they are not gonna stick together, but I would like to avoid that.

Scenario wanted:

- VM A - running on ESXi1

- VM B - running on ESXi2
- Antiaffinity rule for those VMs
- vMotion disabled role for those VMs
- DRS automation level disabled for those VMs

Thanks in advance to everybody, I hope I have been sufficiently clear.

David

[cliffcahill · Accepted solution]

High Availability does not consult DRS rules for affinity or anti-affinity when a virtual machine is powering on. A DRS can migrate virtual machines to satisfy affinity rules after the virtual machine is powered on.

[SureshKumarMuth]

Actually the HA will restart the machine , however precedence for DRS rules also be given. In the affinity rules, you have two options "must" and "should",

must --> if the condition fails vm will be powered off, strictly enforcing the rules

should --> not very strict , in host failure scenario it may start the vm on other host and the vm will run when there is no other way.

You may check vsphere availability guide for more clarity

[SureshKumarMuth]

VMware DRS Rules - Should VS Must

[DavidDAVE]

Thanks everybody for your answers, all of them very usefull . Case closed.

Kind regards,

David