Resource Pool Usage with vSphere Essentials

[Newb449]

A silly question but one I must ask anyway:

I have a vSphere Essentials license with my two ESXi4 hosts. I knew that DRS was not included in vSphere. What wasn’t so obvious to me was that you need to have DRS enabled in order to create a resource pool at the cluster at the vSphere level without it. (The option to create a new cluster is greyed out). http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=100409...

So my question is:

Is there any benefit to creating a cluster if you don’t have DRS? I’ll now have to double up and create resource pools at the host level for both hosts, which is an administrative burden. In addition, one of the main reasons I’ve used resource pools was to facilitate role-based access rights to specific VMs. This two will now have to be set for each host.

Your feedback on this is greatly appreciated

[LarryBlanco2]

As far as permissions goes, you should be able to create folders under the 'VM's and Templates' view. You should also be able to add permissions to the folders there. It's not a resource pool so you can't limit mem or cpu but you can limit who has access to what at the folder level. It can be for a group of VM's on different hosts and accross different clusters.

You'll have greater flexibility under folders for permissions that you would under a resource pool.

Hope that helps.

LB

[Newb449]

Interesting. This will eliminate the need to create security groups for each host.

But I'll still have to create resource pools at the host level yes?

My question remains... Is there any benefit in creating a cluster if you don't have DRS?

I think I've answered my own question. You can't create a resource pool in the cluster without DRS. Therefore if you want to use reasouce pools, they'll need to be created at the host level so you can't have a cluster.

[LarryBlanco2 · Accepted solution]

Other than being able to use EVC mode and setting up the swapfile location. I believe there isn't much more to a cluster if you are not using HA or DRS. Since you do not have DRS yor cannot create resource pools that span the multiple hosts within a cluster.

You will have to create the individual resource pools on each host by taking your host out of a cluster and jsut having them in the Data Center.

LB.

[Newb449]

Indeed!

Thanks LB