how to set up mutually exclusive VMs on the same ESXi host?

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Thuleman

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EDIT: Subject fail, looking for a way to set up VMs that will be mutually exclusive on the same host, meaning they will never be on the same host ever.

I am using an OpenVPN VM to get to my private VLAN VMs so I am thinking to set up a second OpenVPN VM to ensure I don't lock myself out of access to those VLANs.

Of course there's HA and FT to make sure that VM doesn't go down, but those don't protect against user error in terms of making some configuration change that hoses the VM or whatever.

Naturally that VM is always accessible via vCenter and recoverable from backups etc., but that doesn't necessarily address the issue that someone has to be there to make the recovery. You could argue that whoever screwed it up has to recover it right then, but there are other cases where you may want VMs to be mutually exclusive to a host (i.e. DNS servers, mail, domain controllers, etc.)

Is it possible to set VMs (or hosts) up such that under no circumstances two VMs will end up on the same host without the use of host affinity? Host affinity would of course work but is too much hassle for my purposes in terms of turning affinity off during host updates etc.

I didn't extensively google on this yet as I figured it would be a worthwhile discussion to have here.
 
DRS affinity rules is really it, unless you want to perma-slave a vm to a host by adding a com port, small drive on local storage, etc.

If you have 3 hosts, affinity isn't much of a problem :) it'll always keep them apart for 1 host maint.
 
Thanks guys, separating the VMs via the "anti-affinity" is what I was looking for just didn't have the v5 license that has DRS set up yet. Our v4 machines are running on Standard whereas v5 will be Enterprise. I am up to 10 hosts now, will be adding 3 more soon™.
 
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