Undocumented SDRS Advanced Options

Almost two years ago, I was challenged by one VMware customer who has experienced failed VM's provisioning in case of parallel VM deployments. SDRS default behavior is not optimized for fast multiple parallel deployments because it returns just SDRS recommendations (step 1) and later (step 2) these recommendations are applied by someone else who is executing VM provisioning. Back in the days, when SDRS was designed and developed, it was optimized for few VM provisioning, however nowadays when we are in a cloud era, more parallel provisionings are common.

Disclaimer: Please note that default behavior works best for most of the cases, do use advanced options only when it is required. Below are some of the Storage DRS advanced options user can configure on Storage DRS cluster. These options may or may not have been properly documented from my research/digging and it is most likely not supported by VMware. Please take caution if you decide to play with this advanced settings.

SDRS Advanced settings

VraInitPlacement
The reason behind this option is explained in this video - "VMware vSphere SDRS VM provisioning process". Based on my customer feedback, VMware engineering has introduced 'VraInitialPlacement' - SDRS advanced setting - which reconfigures SDRS to generate only one recommendation and reserve the resource till "lease" expires. Lease time is defined in API call as property resourceLeaseDurationSec. It is by default 0 (no lease) but it can be reconfigured on VRA side. It is used in conjunction with VRA custom property "VirtualMachine.Admin.Datastore.Cluster.ResourceLeaseDurationSec" at VMware VRA Documentation here - https://docs.vmware.com/en/vRealize-Automation/7.4/com.vmware.vra.prepare.use.doc/GUID-FA2ED665-4973-435C-A93B-8E4EAB5D1F8A.html

Custom property description: When provisioning to multiple VMs and using SDRS, specifies a value in seconds, in the range of 30 to 3600, for reserving storage resources during the RecommendDataStore API call. You can add this property to a business group or blueprint or when you request provisioning. The lease lock is only applied to the datastore that is used by the deployment, not all datastores in the storage cluster. The lease lock is released when provisioning either completes or fails. If not specified, no lock is applied to the storage resources at provisioning time.

Long story short, when 'VraInitPlacement' is set to "1", it generates only one recommendation. This is VMware internal undocumented option but in theory, it can be done by vSphere admin. But Lease Time is not configurable by vSphere Admin and it is the parameter (property) during vSphere SOAP API call asking for SDRS recommendations.

To set this advanced parameter choose Datastore Cluster > Edit Settings > SDRS Automation > Advanced Options (SDRS) > insert property  'VraInitialPlacement' with value 1

VraExpandDisk 
This is another SDRS Advanced option. When this is enabled and an expand disk will exceed the size of the datastore the disk will be storage vMotioned to another datastore which can service the request.

To set this advanced parameter choose Datastore Cluster > Edit Settings > SDRS Automation > Advanced Options (SDRS) > insert property  'VraExpandDisk' with value 1

EnforceStorageProfiles
To configure Storage DRS interop with SPBM, below options need to be set.

• 0 – disabled (default)
• 1 – soft enforcement
• 2 – hard enforcement

percentIdleMBinSpaceDemand
The PercentIdleMBinSpaceDemand setting defines the percentage of IdleMB that is added to the allocated space of a VMDK during free space calculation of the datastore. The default value is set to 25%. This value can range from 0 to 100.

For more info look at http://frankdenneman.nl/2012/10/01/avoiding-vmdk-level-over-commitment-while-using-thin-disks-and-storage-drs/

EnforceCorrelationForAffinity
Use datastore correlation while enforcing/fixing anti-affinity rules

• 0 – disabled (default)
• 1 – soft enforcement
• 2 – hard enforcement

OTHER VMWARE VSPHERE ADVANCED SETTINGS
Back in the days, William Lam published the blog post "New vSphere 5 HA, DRS and SDRS Advanced/Hidden Options". It is worth to read it.