prevent a VM from vmotioned to a host

[umarzuki]

why would i want this?

it is simply because there's a host with 15 GB RAM but does not have the same CPU as the other 2 esxi 4.1 host. A VM can be vmotioned (host vmotion) to it but not from it to another host.

is this possible?

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Are the hosts in the same cluster?  If you want to disable vMotion to and from and single host you can disable the vMotion setting on the vmkernel port used for vMotion.  If you're using DRS you can create rules which prevent certain VMs from starting on the host.

Dave
VMware Communities User Moderator

Free ESXi Essentials training / eBook offer

Now available - VMware ESXi: Planning, Implementation, and Security

Also available - vSphere Quick Start Guide

[umarzuki]

yes, in the same cluster.

so I'll just disable the vmotion then.

thanks.

[umarzuki]

hi Dave,

unfortunately any VM that is not started/powered on will be migrated to that host. In my case, when a host set to maintenance mode. It seems that disabling vmotion does not prevent that.

[Dave_Mishchenko · Accepted solution]

Disabling vMotion would only prevent running VMs from migrating to the host once they're running as you've found.  If you have a group of VMs you want to prevent starting on that host, create a DRS group with those VMs, a group with that host in it, and a rule which specifies that the VM group should not run on that host group.

[maishsk]

If they are in the same Cluster - have you enabled EVC - which should allow you to vMotion freely - to and from any host in the cluster?

Maish

VMware Communities Moderator

My Blog - @maishsk

Co-Author of VMware vSphere Design

[umarzuki]

unfortunately 2 of  the esxi hosts in the cluster is not capable of EVC which resulted in me isolating the esxi host that have a different CPU via DRS rule.