Description:

Consolidation of physical servers into virtual machines that share host physical resources can result in significant reductions in the costs associated with hardware maintenance and power consumption. VMware Distributed Power Management (VMware DPM) provides additional power savings beyond this initial benefit by dynamically consolidating workloads even further during periods of low resource utilization. Virtual machines are migrated onto fewer hosts and the unneeded ESX hosts are powered off. VMware DPM is an optional feature of VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS). This paper provides a technical overview of VMware DPM operation in ESX 4 and vCenter Server 4. It is intended for VMware partners, resellers, and customers who want detailed information on VMware DPM functionality in that release.