Allocation rules

1 Create a global load balance rule
2 Create datacenter load balance rules
3 Create load level compute rules
4 Create load level storage rules
5 Restrict tenants from sharing servers
6 Redirect deployments with allocation rules
7 Manage allocation rules with the API

This page describes how to manage allocation rules to control resource scheduling in private cloud data centers while allowing your virtualization technology to take care of the details.

Create a global load balance rule

To create a global load balance rule:

Go to Infrastructure → Private → select a datacenter
If you are in Map view or Statistics view, click the Server symbol in top right-hand corner to go to Servers view
Go to Allocation rules
On the Global panel, click the + add button
As the Rule type select "Load balance"
Select the Load balance type. The default load balance rule is progressive

Create a global load balance rule

Create datacenter load balance rules

A datacenter load balance rule will have priority over a global load balance rule.

To create a datacenter load balance rule:

Privileges: Access infrastructure view and Private DCs, View datacenter details, Manage allocation rules

Go to Infrastructure → Private → select datacenter
If you are in Map view or Statistics view, click the server symbol in top right-hand corner to go to Servers view
Go to Allocation rules
On the Datacenter panel, click the + add button
Select Load balance as the rule type
Select the load balance type

Create a load balance rule for a datacenter

Create load level compute rules

To create a load level compute rule:

Privileges: Access infrastructure view and Private DCs, View datacenter details, Manage allocation rules

Go to Infrastructure → Private → select a datacenter
If you are in Map view or Statistics view, click the Server symbol in top right-hand corner to go to Servers view
Go to Allocation rules
On the Global pane, click the +add button
For the Rule type, select Load level compute
1. If you are using a cluster as a physical machine, to create rules for the cluster, select the Server option
Complete the dialog
1. For Server or Cluster:
  1. if you are using a VMware vCenter cluster as a host, to create rules for the cluster, select Server
2. For Cluster: If you are using vCenter with ESXi, the platform detects the clusters. Select a specific cluster. A cluster rule affects all hosts irrespective of their state, for example, it applies to hosts that are powered off.
3. For Aggregate: Select to create a rule for the sum of all resources in a group (datacenters, racks, or clusters). This means that the platform will sum all of the resources in the group and calculate the load level percentage of the total in order to determine the available resources for the group.

Create load level storage rules

To specify the storage load on machine datastores, use storage load level rules. The scheduler will use these rules to help determine if a physical machine is a candidate to hold a VM.

You can create rules for the following elements:

A datacenter (all datastore tiers)
A tier (all datastores in a tier)
A specific datastore.

If there is more than one rule that applies to a datastore, the most specific rule takes precedence over more general rules.

To create a load level storage rule:

Privileges: Access infrastructure view and Private DCs, View datacenter details, Manage allocation rules

Go to Infrastructure → Private → select a datacenter
If you are in Map view or Statistics view, click the Server symbol in top right-hand corner to go to Servers view
Go to Allocation rules
On the Global panel, click the + add button and complete the dialog
1. For the Rule type, select Load level storage
2. For the Datastore and Datastore tier select All or a specific tier
3. For Storage, to limit the amount to use, enter a percentage (0 to 100%)
Click Save

The platform uses Load level rules to specify the level that the scheduler can assign to the virtualization technology. The virtualization technology is responsible for managing the load that is assigned

Restrict tenants from sharing servers

To stop a tenant from deploying on the same physical machine as another tenant, use enterprise exclusion rules, which are called Restrict shared server rules. There is no limit on the amount of these rules you can create.

To create a restrict shared server rule:

Go to Infrastructure → Private
Select a datacenter
Go to Allocation rules → Global
Click the + add button
Select Restrict shared server rule
Select the two enterprises that must not share a physical server. The cloud admin must configure the rules properly to customize VM deployments.

Note that you can also restrict servers by editing an enterprise in Users view. See Manage enterprise policies | Reserve physical machines for a tenant and restrict deployments.

Redirect deployments with allocation rules

You can use allocation rules to redirect deployments. Here are some examples:

To gradually migrate users to a new empty hypervisor, set load balance rules to performance. This will ensure that new deployments will go to the new machine.
To stop VMs from deploying to a specific physical machine, set load level rules to 1% for RAM and CPU. This will ensure that users cannot deploy more VMs to this physical machine. However, it is also important to consider that users will not be able to reconfigure the VMs that were already deployed there.

Manage allocation rules with the API

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