You can turn off DRS for a cluster.

When DRS is deactivated:

  • DRS affinity rules are not removed but are not applied until DRS is reactivated.
  • Host and VM groups are not removed but are not applied until DRS is reactivated.
  • Resource pools are permanently removed from the cluster. To avoid losing the resource pools, save a snapshot of the resource pool tree on your local machine. You can use the snapshot to restore the resource pool when you activate DRS.
Note: Do not deactivate DRS if Workload Management is activated, this makes WCP services unrecoverable.

Procedure

  1. Browse to the cluster in the vSphere Client.
  2. Click the Configure tab and click Services.
  3. Under vSphere DRS, click Edit.
  4. Deselect the Turn On vSphere DRS check box.
  5. Click OK to turn off DRS.
  6. (Optional) Choose an option to save the resource pool.
    • Click Yes to save a resource pool tree snapshot on a local machine.
    • Click No to turn off DRS without saving a resource pool tree snapshot.

Results

DRS is turned off.
Note: vSphere DRS is a critical feature of vSphere which is required to maintain the health of the workloads running inside vSphere Cluster. Starting with vSphere 7.0 Update 1, DRS depends on the availability of vCLS VMs. See vSphere Cluster Services for more information.