Dynamically Allocate System Resources

Performance and Scalability

Large-scale management.  Manage hundreds of servers and thousands of virtual machines. VirtualCenter 2 starts up faster, is more responsive and is designed from the ground up to handle the largest IT environments.

Management

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.

Distributed Resource Optimization

Abstraction of resources from hardware virtual machines.  Manage resources independently of the physical servers that contribute the 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.

Isolation between resource pools.  Make allocation changes within a resource pool without impacting other unrelated resource pools. For example, any allocation changes in the resource pool dedicated to a given business unit do not impact other resource pools.

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 (experimental) 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.

High Availability

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.