VMware HA (High Availability) supports high availability for virtual machines in case of ESXi host failures. VMware HA monitors the hosts. In the event of the host failure, VMware HA restarts the virtual machines to the other hosts in the cluster with capacity. When you add new virtual machines to a VMware HA cluster, VMware HA checks whether enough capacity to power on that virtual machine on a different host in case of host failure is available. It is a well-known feature that everyone will be using for high availability of the virtual machines. We will enable the VMware HA on the vSphere cluster level and the configured cluster settings will be applied to all the virtual machines running on the HA cluster. Can we override the HA settings at VM level? Yes, We can make use of VM Overrides to disable HA for individual virtual machines. In this article, I will explain the detailed step by step procedure to disable VMware HA for individual VM using VM Overrides option.

As we aware that VMware HA provides High availability for virtual machines in case of physical ESXi host failures. Why do we want to disable it for VM level? I can think of one real-world example is Application cluster running multiple nodes in each host in the cluster and each application or database server license is tied to the physical CPU of the ESXi host. You want the virtual machines to be rebooted on different ESXi host in case HA Failover. In this scenario, you can disable VMware HA for individual VM using VM Overrides option.

How to Disable VMware HA for individual VM?

To disable VMWare HA for individual VM in DRS cluster, Login to vCenter Server using vSphere Web Client -> Select the HA Cluster -> Configure ->VM Overrides -> Click “Add”

n the Add VM Overrides option, Click on “+” symbol to add the virtual machines.

Select the virtual machine or group of virtual machines which you want to disable HA using VM Overrides option. Click on Ok.

Select the option “Disabled” under the VM restart priority drop-down to disable HA for individual VM.  By default, VM restart priority for any VM is ” Use Cluster Settings”. Click on Ok.

Once VM restart priority is selected, Click on Ok.

Once the VM overrides is configured for the virtual machine. You can check configured VM Overrides and its vSphere HA Restart priority under “VM overrides” option of the HA cluster.

We are done with disabling VMware HA for individual VM. I hope this is informative for you. Thanks for Reading!!!. Be social and share it with social media, if you feel worth sharing it.