I’ve seen a lot of confusion around the ForceAffinePowerOn setting, and even the VMware documentation is incorrect around what this feature is / does. First and foremost: ForceAffinePowerOn is an advanced DRS setting (Yes I filed a doc bug for it). I’ve seen many people stating it is an HA setting, but it is not. You need to configure this in the advanced settings section of your DRS configuration.
Secondly, ForceAffinePowerOn can be used to ensure VM to VM affinity rules are respected when powering on a VM. ForceAffinePowerOn has absolutely nothing to do with VM to VM anti-affinity rules, it only applies to “affinity”.
Lets be crystal clear:
- When ForceAffinePowerOn is set to 0, it means that VM to VM affinity can be dropped if necessary to power on a VM.
- When ForceAffinePowerOn is set to 1, it means that VM to VM affinity should not be dropped and power-on should fail if the rule cannot be respected.
I hope that helps!