Maintenance, Shutdown - execution order.

[memphiz_apc]

This was originally posted on APC forums on 9/30/2015

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Hello

Our enviroment is: 4 Esxi 6.0 hosts in vCenter cluster (with DRS enabled)  + fresh install of PowerChute 4.1 Vappliance + 1 APC SMART-UPS VT 15 kVA
PCNS is configured to shut down VMs on "on battery event"  but we do not want VM to be migrated (migration on PCNS is disabled)

Everything would work just fine if not one exeption.
1. If "on battery event" occurs PCNS trying to put all host in maintenance mode.
2. Because of maintanace mode  DRS is trying to migrate VMs as quick as possible to any avaliable host.
3. Because hosts are being put into maitanace sequentially (not all at the same time) - VM's are starting to migrate crazy over whole enviroment.

So there are lots of migration going on - but not shuting down.  Eventually all VM's will be shut, but is this "migration confusion" really necessary ?

Am'I missing an idea of network shutdown or do we have some inproper settings in PCNS ?Should't PCNS shutdown VM at a first place and then try to put host in maintenance ?

How we should set our envirometn (VMware + PCNS) to prevent from migrating during shutdown sequence ?

[BillP · Accepted solution]

This reply was originally posted by Bill on APC forums on 9/30/2015

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Tom,

if you do not want the VMs migrated you need to disable DRS or create a DRS rule that would cause the VMs to be migrated to 1 of the host that are being put into maintained mode which should prevent the migration. 

VM migration with DRS is discussed starting on page 29 of the user’s guide.