DRS affinity rules - if I set to manual, they are preserved, if I disable DRS, DO I LOSE VM AFFINITY RULES? And if I lose them if DRS is disabled ... can I back them up some way prior or are they still in vCenter database?
If you disable DRS the rules will not be there when you enable it again. The best way is to have it written down.
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Thanks _David. I have experienced this situation. I need verification that this remains true to date with latest versions and some automated way to backup rules (100+ possibly) if possible. So thanks, helpful, but not fully answered.
Other comments solicited and welcomed.
In the VI toolkit 1.5 for windows there is a cmdlet to list the rules
Get-DrsRule
Retrieves the
list of Drs rules for the specified clusters. Each rule defines the
virtual machines that can run on the same host (affinity rule) or must
run on different hosts (anti-affinity).
There is also a perl script to list the affinity rules check this thread
http://communities.vmware.com/message/987594
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_David -
Thanks for the input. I'm gonna post separately for a backup/restore restore method that doesn't require manually re-entering the rules. I'm awarding you the points. Thanks.
As per the current design for 5.1 & 5.5, even though you disable DRS, DRS rules are still available but would be disabled too. Once you enable DRS on the same cluster, these rules would be enabled as well.
Also, if you create VM-Host affinity/anti-affinity hard (must) rule, even though DRS is disabled, this rule will be remain enabled as HA would honor this rule. There is no way you can disable that rule once the DRS is disabled. Better way is to remove or disable such rule before DRS is getting disabled.