Minimal rebalance of data movers

[smp]

We are running spve 8.1.13.3. I have a schedule with 5 data movers(dm1 - dm5) assigned to it. We are using the tagging feature with dm1 - dm5 assigned to each VM. My solution for occasional long running VM backups is to assign them specifically to dm5 which is supposed to be reserved for long running VM backups which occasionally run over 24 hours. If a VM backup takes over 24 hours to complete, then the next night's scheduled backup using that data mover is missed. My problem is that new VMs which are not assigned to a specific data mover are sometimes assigned to dm5 even though the default data mover is dm1. The first backup for a VM without an assigned VM will use dm1 as I want it to, but immediately following the schedule, I see in the dsmsched.log a message, ANS4313I rebalance schedule type: minimal. I believe this is selecting all of the VM with no specific data mover assigned to them and assigning dm1 - dm5 to them. Now we have VMs assigned to dm5 that I didn't want to use dm5. I know that there is a manual full rebalance option. IBM suggested that I create a new schedule for dm5 only. It doesn't appear that I can assign a schedule tag to a VM folder and then assign a different schedule tag to a specific VM under that folder. The schedule tags are not available for selection when I try to assign specific tags to the VM. This seems more complicated than it should be. The whole issue is created by the automatic minimal rebalance.
Questions:
1. Is the minimal rebalance a new feature? I thought rebalance of data movers for a schedule only happened when I manually selected the option in the vSphere gui using schedule configuration.
2. How can I ensure that only VMs specifically selected by me will use dm5?

 

[dcabro]

Is your DM1 set to be VMTAGDEFAULTdatamover? Yes, rebalance should happen only when you run it manually, I don't think that happens automatically unless you have "vmrebalancescheduleperiod" in your schedule.

2. Just assign those VMs to dm5. Add a tag or select the datamover from the VM SP plugin.

 

[smp]

Is your DM1 set to be VMTAGDEFAULTdatamover? Yes, rebalance should happen only when you run it manually, I don't think that happens automatically unless you have "vmrebalancescheduleperiod" in your schedule.

2. Just assign those VMs to dm5. Add a tag or select the datamover from the VM SP plugin.

1. Yes, DM1 is set to be VMTAGDEFAULTdatamover. I don't have vmrebalancescheduleperiod coded.
2. I did specifically assign the VMs to dm5 that I wanted to be in dm5. The issue is that I do not want any other VMs to be assigned to dm5 automatically.

I opened a case with IBM but they never said there was a way to turn off the minimal rebalance. The way I expected it to work was that if a new VM was added without a specific datamover tag, then it would always use the default datamover tag until I manually added a datamover tag or I ran a full rebalance. I guess the only way to ensure that other VMs are not assigned to dm5 is to create a schedule for just dm5 as IBM suggested. That way, there isn't an option of other datamovers to choose from.

Thanks for your reply.