DRS rules for license affinity

To save license costs, administrators may create DRS rules to ensure that VMs with a specific operating system run on a specific host.

To deploy VMs to groups based on their operating system types:

1. In a vCenter cluster, create a Cluster VM Group with the following naming convention for each operating system name.

   Lic_{clustername}_{osname}_VMs

   For example

   Lic_vcloudcluster_Windows_VMs

2. In the abiquo.properties file on the Remote Services server, create properties to map the operating system types to VM groups. The properties should have the following format

   com.abiquo.esxi.experimental.vmgroup.gueststartswith.{OSprefix}

   For example, Windows guests should have a guestOperatingSystemId that starts with "win". To map them to an "osname" of Windows and assign them to the corresponding group, set this property.

   Now Abiquo will deploy VMs with an osType of Windows using a DRS rule to assign them to the following group

   Here are some more examples of mapping properties.

   Remember that you will need to restart the server.

3. In Abiquo, check that you have correctly set the operating system types of the VM templates. See Modify a VM template#Advanced tab

Screenshot: vCenter cluster VM group

Open

Limitations: This feature is for use at deploy time and the platform won’t add captured VMs to a group and it won’t check the group during the reconfigure process.