VMware vSphere^TM

Distributed Resource Optimization

• Aggregation of physical server resources.  Manage CPU and memory across a group of  physical servers as a uniform shared pool of resources.
• Flexible hierarchical organization.  Organize resource pools hierarchically to match available IT resources to the business organization. VMware DRS ensures that resource utilization is maximized while business units retain control and autonomy of their infrastructure. Resource pools can be flexibly added, removed, or reorganized as business needs or organization change.
• Priority Settings. Assign priorities in the form of shares or reservations  to virtual machines within resource pools and to sub resource pools to reflect business priorities. For example, the production sub resource pool can have higher shares of the total resources in a cluster and business critical applications within the production resource pool can have fixed guarantees(reservations) of CPU bandwidth and memory,
• Management of sets of virtual machines running a distributed application.  Optimize the service level of distributed applications by controlling the aggregate allocation of resources for the entire set of virtual machines running the distributed application.
• Affinity Rules. Create rules that govern the allocation of virtual machines to physical servers. For example, certain virtual machines can always run on the same server for performance reasons. Alternatively, specified virtual machines can always run on different servers for increased availability.
• Power Management. Reduce energy consumption in the datacenter by using Distributed Power Management to consolidate workloads and power off power consuming servers when they are not needed by virtual machines in the cluster. When resource requirements of virtual machines increase, Distributed Power Management brings hosts back online so service levels can be met.
• Manual and Automatic Mode.   VMware DRS collects resource usage information from servers and virtual machines, and then generates recommendations to optimize virtual machine allocation. These recommendations can be executed automatically or manually.
• Initial placement.  When a virtual machine is first powered on, VMware DRS either automatically places the virtual machine on the most appropriate physical server or makes a recommendation.
• Continuous optimization. VMware DRS continuously optimizes resource allocations based on defined resource allocation rules and resource utilization. The resource allocation changes can be automatically executed by performing live migration of virtual machines through VMotion. Alternatively, in manual mode, VMware DRS provides execution recommendations for system administrators.
• Maintenance mode for servers.  Perform maintenance on physical servers without disruption to virtual machines and end users. When a physical server is placed in maintenance mode, VMware DRS identifies alternative servers where the virtual machines can run. Based on automation mode settings, the virtual machines are either automatically moved to use the alternative servers, or the system administrator performs the move manually using the VMware DRS recommendations as a guideline.
• Large-scale management. Manage CPU and memory across up to 32 servers and 1280 virtual machines per DRS cluster.