Cisco UCS Director VMware Management Policy is used to determine how virtual machines will behave and more specifically be cleaned up. In the cloud world, the removal of inactive and unnecessary virtual machines may be more important that the deployment of them. The VM Management Policy is used to configure leases, notifications about when leases expire, and determining when a VM is inactive. This policy is very useful to keep your cloud clean, and removing unneeded virtual machines when they’re past their usefulness.

Advanced Controls

Before you get started with setting up a VM Management Policy, be sure to set the advanced control that allows for virtual machines to be deleted automatically by UCSD when they are inactive. The VM Management Policy you will create, will setup the rules, but until the advanced control is set up, the policy won’t do anything.

To set the advanced control go to the Administration drop down –> System. From there click the “Advanced Controls” tab and then select the “Delete Inactive VMs Based on vDC Policy” check box.

VM Management Policy

To create a VM Management Policy go to the Policies drop down –> Virtual/Hypervisor Policies –> Service Delivery and then the VM Management Policy tab.

Click “Add”.

Give the policy a name and description. Then configure lease notification settings and the number of days before an inactive VM is considered unused. This also requires setting follow up notifications and a grace period prior to deletion.

• Configure VM Lease Notification: Check this box to set notifications for any VMs with a lease expiring.
• How many days before VM Lease expiry should notifications be sent: When should notifications start being sent before a VM Lease expires?
• How many notifications should be sent: The number of notifications that will be sent via email.
• Interval between notifications: How long between notifications before sending another one.
• Delete after inactive VM days: The number of days a VM is unused before being considered inactive.
• Additional grace period for deleting expired VMs: An additional number of days before finally deleting the VM.
• Action for failed rollback tasks: What happens if the rollback fails. Notify and delete the VM or just notify.
• Configure VM Delete Notification: Decide whether or not to send notifications about VM deletions.
• How many days before VM deletion should notifications be sent: How long before a VM is deleted should notifications be sent out
• How many notifications should be sent: Number of notifications to send for the VM.
• Interval between notifications: Time period between the notifications.

Click Submit and the repeat for any additional management policies.

Summary

The VM Management Policy is useful for setting up notifications for virtual machine removal. Let’s face it, users might be a little skiddish if they know their virtual machines are going to be deleted without any notifications. This policy is crucial to keeping your data center clean of unused virtual machines.