By default Storage DRS applies an Intra-VM affinity rule to all new virtual machines in the datastore cluster. The Intra-VM affinity rule keeps the virtual machine files, such as VMX file, log files, vSwap and VMDK files together on one datastore. Keeping all files together on one datastore allows ease of troubleshooting. However Storage DRS [...]

In its basic form Storage DRS can be used together with any array, however there are a few combinations of Storage array features and Storage DRS features that don’t mix easily. One of the most sought after question is can Storage DRS work with Array based Auto-tiering? And the answer is yes, yes you can [...]

Lately I have received many questions about the interoperability between HA and affinity rules of DRS and SDRS. I’ve created a table listing the (anti-) affinity rules available in a vSphere 5.0 environment. Technology Type Affinity Anti-Affinity Respected by VMware HA DRS VM-VM Keep virtual machines together Separate virtual machines No VM-Host Should run on [...]

Recently an interesting question was raised about what happens if enough free space is available in the datastore cluster but not enough space is available per datastore during placement of a virtual machine. This scenario is often referred as a defragmented datastore cluster. The short answer is that if not enough space available on any [...]