Use the Rule Set page to define storage placement rules. If your storage provides additional data services, such as replication, use the page to specify which data services to include in the VM storage policy.

Prerequisites

  • If your environment includes storage entities such as vSAN or Virtual Volumes, review these functionalities. For information, see the Administering VMware vSAN documentation and Working with Virtual Volumes.
  • To configure predefined storage policy components, see About Storage Policy Components.

Procedure

  1. Make sure that the Use rule-sets in the storage policy check box is selected.
  2. Define placement rules.
    Placement rules request a specific storage entity as a destination for the virtual machine. They can be capability-based or tag-based. Capability-based rules are based on data services that storage entities such as vSAN and Virtual Volumes advertise through storage (VASA) providers. Tag-based rules reference tags that you assign to datastores.
    Option Description
    Placement based on storage capabilities
    1. From the Storage Type drop-down menu, select a target storage entity, for example, Virtual Volumes.
    2. From theAdd rule drop-down menu, select a capability and specify its value.

      For example, you can specify the number of read operations per second for Virtual Volumes objects. You can include as many rules as you need for the selected storage entity. Verify that the values you provide are within the range of values that the storage resource advertises.

    3. If you need to fine-tune your placement request further, add a tag-based rule.

      Tag-based rules can include or exclude specific placement criteria. For example, you can exclude datastores with the Palo Alto tag from the list of your target Virtual Volumes datastores.

    Placement based on tags
    1. From the Storage Type drop-down menu, select Tags based placement.
    2. From theAdd rule drop-down menu, select Tags from category.
    3. Define tag-based placement criteria.

      For example, you can request as a target all datastores with the VMFS-Gold tag.

  3. (Optional) Select data services to include in the VM storage policy.
    The data services that you reference on the Rule Set page are provided by the storage. The VM storage policy that references the data services, requests them for the virtual machine.
    1. Click the Add component () icon and select a data service category from the drop-down menu, for example, Replication.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
  4. (Optional) To define another rule set, click Add another rule set and repeat Step 2 through Step 3.
    Multiple rule sets allow a single policy to define alternative storage placement parameters, often from several storage providers.
  5. Click Next.