Storage DRS Does Not Generate Recommendations for All NFS 4.1 Datastores in the cluster

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• In environments using NFS 4.1 datastores Storage DRS generates recommendations for only one datastore, while other NFS 4.1 datastores do not receive any recommendations for load balancing or initial placement.
• Storage DRS consistently selects the same datastore and does not provide alternative placement options.
• Additionally, Storage DRS reports faults such as: "Could not balance datastore IOPS reservation."

Environment

vSphere 8.0

vSphere 7.0

Cause

vSphere 8.0: 

Storage DRS supports only initial placement and space-based load balancing for NFS 4.1 datastores. 

I/O-based balancing is not supported for NFS 4.1 in this version.

vSphere 7.0:

Storage DRS does not support NFS 4.1 datastores at all.

Resolution

Since I/O-based load balancing is not supported for NFS 4.1 datastores in vSphere 8.0, you can disable I/O reservation using below steps:

• Disable the option "Enable IO metric for SDRS recommendations".
• Set the following advanced SDRS options:
  EnforceIOReservations = 0
  EnableIoLoadBalancing = 0

 

Additional Information

VMware vSphere 8.0 : NFS Datastore Concepts and Operations in vSphere Environment

VMware vSphere 7.0 : NFS Datastore Concepts and Operations in vSphere Environment

Storage DRS is unable to balance VMs across datastores