Define Common Rules for a VM Storage Policy

On the Common rules page, specify which data services to include in the VM storage policy. The data services are provided by software components that are installed on your ESXi hosts and vCenter Server. The VM storage policy that includes common rules activates specified data services for the virtual machine.

The data services are generic for all types of storage and do not depend on a datastore. Depending on your environment, the data services can belong to various categories, including encryption, caching, replication, and so on. Certain data services, such as encryption, are provided by VMware. Others are offered by third-party I/O filters.

Prerequisites

• For information about encrypting your virtual machines, see the vSphere Security documentation.
• For information about I/O filters, see Filtering Virtual Machine I/O.
• For information about storage policy components, see About Storage Policy Components.

Procedure

1. Enable common rules by selecting Use common rules in the VM storage policy.
2. Click the Add component () icon and select a data service category from the drop-down menu, for example, Replication.
3. Define rules for the data service category by specifying an appropriate provider and values for the rules. Or select the data service from the list of predefined components.

   Option	Description
   Component Name	This option is available if you have predefined storage policy components in your database. If you know which component to use, select it from the list to add to the VM storage policy.
   See all	Review all component available for the category. To include a specific component, select it from the list and click OK.
   Custom	Define custom rules for the data service category by specifying an appropriate provider and values for the rules.

4. Add more components to request other data services.
   You can use only one component from the same category, for example caching, per a set of common or regular rules.
5. Click Next.