vCLS VMs are always powered-on because vSphere DRS depends on the availability of these VMs. These VMs should be treated as system VMs. Only administrators can perform selective operations on vCLS VMs. To avoid failure of cluster services, avoid performing any configuration or operations on the vCLS VMs.

vCLS VMs are protected from accidental deletion. Cluster VMs and folders are protected from modification by users, including administrators.

Only users which are part of the Administrators SSO group can perform the following operations::

  • ReadOnly access for vCLS VMs
  • Console access to vCLS VMs
  • Relocate vCLS VMs to either new storage, compute resource or both using cold or hot migration
  • Power off vCLS VMs

Operations that might disrupt the healthy functioning of vCLS VMs:

  • Changing the power state of the vCLS VMs
  • Resource reconfiguration of the vCLS VMs such as changing CPU, Memory, Disk size, Disk placement
  • VM encryption
  • Triggering vMotion of the vCLS VMs
  • Changing the BIOS
  • Removing the vCLS VMs from the inventory
  • Deleting the vCLS VMs from disk
  • Enabling FT of vCLS VMs
  • Cloning vCLS VMs
  • Configuring PMem
  • Moving vCLS VM to a different folder
  • Renaming the vCLS VMs
  • Renaming the vCLS folders
  • Enabling DRS rules and overrides on vCLS VMs
  • Enabling HA admission control policy on vCLS VMs
  • Enabling HA overrides on vCLS VMs
  • Moving vCLS VMs to a resource pool
  • Recovering vCLS VMs from a snapshot

When you perform any disruptive operation on the vCLS VMs, a warning dialog box appears.

Troubleshooting:

The health of vCLS VMs, including power state, is managed by EAM and WCP services. In case of power on failure of vCLS VMs, or if the first instance of DRS for a cluster is skipped due to lack of quorum of vCLS VMs, a banner appears in the cluster summary page along with a link to a Knowledge Base article to help troubleshoot the error state.

Because vCLS VMs are treated as system VMs, you do not need to backup or snapshot these VMs. The health state of these VMs is managed by vCenter services.