Storage Policy Based Management (SPBM) allows you to specify the policy for a virtual machine which is enforced by Storage DRS. A datastore cluster can have set of datastores with different capability profiles. If the virtual machines have storage profiles associated with them, Storage DRS can enforce placement based on underlying datastore capabilities.

As part of Storage DRS integration with storage profiles, the Storage DRS cluster level advanced option EnforceStorageProfiles is introduced. Advanced option EnforceStorageProfiles takes one of these integer values: 0,1 or 2. The default value is 0. When the option is set to 0, it indicates that there is no storage profile or policy enforcement on the Storage DRS cluster. When the option is set to 1, it indicates that there is a storage profile or policy soft enforcement on the Storage DRS cluster. This is analogous with DRS soft rules. Storage DRS will comply with storage profile or policy in the optimum level. Storage DRS will violate the storage profile compliant if it is required to do so. Storage DRS affinity rules will have higher precedence over storage profiles only when storage profile enforcement is set to 1. When the option is set to 2, it indicates that there is a storage profile or policy hard enforcement on the Storage DRS cluster. This is analogous with DRS hard rules. Storage DRS will not violate the storage profile or policy compliant. Storage profiles will have higher precedence over affinity rules. Storage DRS will generate fault: could not fix anti-affinity rule violation

Prerequisites

By default, Storage DRS will not enforce storage policies associated with a virtual machine. Please configure EnforceStorageProfiles option according to your requirements. The options are Default (0), Soft (1) or Hard (2).

Procedure

  1. Log in to the vSphere Web client as an Administrator.
  2. In the vSphere Web Client, click on the Storage DRS cluster, then select Manage > Settings > Storage DRS.
  3. Click Edit > Advanced Options > Configuration parameters and select Add.
  4. Click in the area under the Option heading and type EnforceStorageProfiles
  5. Click in the area under the Value heading to the right of the previously entered advanced option name and type the value of either 0, 1 or 2.
  6. Click OK.