Administrator Guide

VMware vSphere and Live Volume

66 Dell EMC SC Series: Synchronous Replication and Live Volume | CML1064

The following vSphere advanced tuning should be configured for non-uniform stretched cluster configurations.

This tuning allows HA to power off and migrate virtual machines during storage-related availability events

after the primary Live Volume becomes available again using the Preserve Live Volume or Live Volume

Failover Automatically feature.

Note: The Live Volume Failover Automatically feature is only supported with vSphere 5.5 and newer.

Set one of the following, depending on the vSphere version:

• vSphere 5.0u1+/5.1: Disk.terminateVMOnPDLDefault = True (/etc/vmware/settings file on each host)

• vSphere 5.5+: VMkernel.Boot.terminateVMOnPDL = yes (advanced setting on each host, reboot

required)

And set one of the following, depending on the vSphere version:

• vSphere 5.5: Disk.AutoremoveOnPDL = 0 (VMware-recommended non-default advanced setting on

each host)

• vSphere 6.0+: Disk.AutoremoveOnPDL = 1 (VMware-recommended default advanced setting on

each host)

And set the following, regardless of the vSphere version:

• vSphere 5.0u1+: das.maskCleanShutdownEnabled = True (Cluster advanced options)

Configuring HA to restart VMs impacted by a non-uniform storage outage was improved in vSphere 6. In

addition to supporting HA restart for Permanent Device Loss (PDL) events, HA restart can also react to All-

Paths-Down (APD) events. The tuning becomes easier and more intuitive using the Web Client or HTML5

client in newer versions of vSphere.

1. It is recommended to configure VM Component Protection for PDL and APD events. For PDL events,

select Power off and restart VMs. For APD events, VMware recommends selecting Power off and

restart VMs (conservative). For the advanced APD settings, refer to VMware documentation or the

VMware vSphere Metro Storage Cluster Recommended Practices available on the VMware

Documentation site.