VMware VSphere ESXi 4.0 Programming manual

vSphere Resource Management Guide

ESX 4.0

ESXi 4.0

vCenter Server 4.0

This document supports the version of each product listed and

supports all subsequent versions until the document is replaced

by a new edition. To check for more recent editions of this

document, see http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs.

EN-000107-02

vSphere Resource Management Guide

2 VMware, Inc.

You can find the most up-to-date technical documentation on the VMware Web site at:

http://www.vmware.com/support/

The VMware Web site also provides the latest product updates.

If you have comments about this documentation, submit your feedback to:

[email protected]

intellectual property laws. VMware products are covered by one or more patents listed at

http://www.vmware.com/go/patents.

VMware is a registered trademark or trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks

and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.

VMware, Inc.

3401 Hillview Ave.

Palo Alto, CA 94304

www.vmware.com

Contents

Updated Information 5

About This Book 7

1Getting Started with Resource Management 9

What Is Resource Management? 9

Configuring Resource Allocation Settings 10

Viewing Resource Allocation Information 13

Admission Control 16

2Managing CPU Resources 17

CPU Virtualization Basics 17

Administering CPU Resources 18

3Managing Memory Resources 25

Memory Virtualization Basics 25

Administering Memory Resources 28

4Managing Resource Pools 37

Why Use Resource Pools? 38

Create Resource Pools 39

Add Virtual Machines to a Resource Pool 40

Removing Virtual Machines from a Resource Pool 41

Resource Pool Admission Control 41

5Creating a DRS Cluster 45

Admission Control and Initial Placement 46

Virtual Machine Migration 47

DRS Cluster Prerequisites 49

Create a DRS Cluster 50

Set a Custom Automation Level for a Virtual Machine 51

Disable DRS 51

6Using DRS Clusters to Manage Resources 53

Using DRS Rules 53

Adding Hosts to a Cluster 55

Adding Virtual Machines to a Cluster 56

Remove Hosts from a Cluster 56

Removing Virtual Machines from a Cluster 57

DRS Cluster Validity 58

Managing Power Resources 62

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7Viewing DRS Cluster Information 67

Viewing the Cluster Summary Tab 67

Using the DRS Tab 69

8Using NUMA Systems with ESX/ESXi 73

What is NUMA? 73

How ESX/ESXi NUMA Scheduling Works 74

VMware NUMA Optimization Algorithms and Settings 75

Resource Management in NUMA Architectures 76

Specifying NUMA Controls 77

APerformance Monitoring Utilities: resxtop and esxtop 81

Using the esxtop Utility 81

Using the resxtop Utility 81

Using esxtop or resxtop in Interactive Mode 82

Using Batch Mode 96

Using Replay Mode 97

BAdvanced Attributes 99

Set Advanced Host Attributes 99

Set Advanced Virtual Machine Attributes 101

Index 103

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Updated Information

This vSphere Resource Management Guide is updated with each release of the product or when necessary.

This table provides the update history of the vSphere Resource Management Guide.

Revision Description

EN-000107-02 Included a point in “Multicore Processors,” on page 19 section.

EN-000107-01 Removed references to CPU.MachineClearThreshold since this advanced CPU attribute is not available

through the vSphere Client.

EN-000107-00 Initial release.

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vSphere Resource Management Guide

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About This Book

The vSphere Resource Management Guide describes resource management for VMware® ESX™, ESXi, and

VMware vCenter™ Server environments.

This guide focuses on the following topics.

nResource allocation and resource management concepts

nVirtual machine attributes and admission control

nResource pools and how to manage them

nClusters, VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), VMware Distributed Power Management

(DPM), and how to work with them

nAdvanced resource management options

nPerformance considerations

The vSphere Resource Management Guide covers ESX, ESXi, and vCenter Server.

Intended Audience

This manual is for system administrators who want to understand how the system manages resources and

how they can customize the default behavior. It’s also essential for anyone who wants to understand and use

resource pools, clusters, DRS, or VMware DPM.

This manual assumes you have a working knowledge of VMware ESX and VMware ESXi and of vCenter

Server.

Document Feedback

VMware welcomes your suggestions for improving our documentation. If you have comments, send your

feedback to [email protected].

vSphere Documentation

The VMware vSphere™ documentation consists of the combined vCenter Server and ESX/ESXi documentation

set.

VMware, Inc. 7

Technical Support and Education Resources

The following technical support resources are available to you. To access the current version of this book and

other books, go to http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs.

Online and Telephone

Support

To use online support to submit technical support requests, view your product

and contract information, and register your products, go to

http://www.vmware.com/support.

Customers with appropriate support contracts should use telephone support

for the fastest response on priority 1 issues. Go to

http://www.vmware.com/support/phone_support.html.

Support Offerings To find out how VMware support offerings can help meet your business needs,

go to http://www.vmware.com/support/services.

VMware Professional

Services

VMware Education Services courses offer extensive hands-on labs, case study

examples, and course materials designed to be used as on-the-job reference

tools. Courses are available onsite, in the classroom, and live online. For onsite

pilot programs and implementation best practices, VMware Consulting

Services provides offerings to help you assess, plan, build, and manage your

virtual environment. To access information about education classes,

certification programs, and consulting services, go to

http://www.vmware.com/services.

vSphere Resource Management Guide

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Getting Started with Resource

Management 1

To understand resource management, you must be aware of its components, its goals, and how best to

implement it in a cluster setting.

Resource allocation settings for a virtual machine (shares, reservation, and limit) are discussed, including how

to set them and how to view them. Also, admission control, the process whereby resource allocation settings

are validated against existing resources is explained.

This chapter includes the following topics:

n“What Is Resource Management?,” on page 9

n“Configuring Resource Allocation Settings,” on page 10

n“Viewing Resource Allocation Information,” on page 13

n“Admission Control,” on page 16

What Is Resource Management?

Resource management is the allocation of resources from resource providers to resource consumers.

The need for resource management arises from the overcommitment of resources—that is, more demand than

capacity and from the fact that demand and capacity vary over time. Resource management allows you to

dynamically reallocate resources, so that you can more efficiently use available capacity.

Resource Types

Resources include CPU, memory, power, storage, and network resources.

Resource management in this context focuses primarily on CPU and memory resources. Power resource

consumption can also be reduced with the VMware® Distributed Power Management (DPM) feature.

NOTE ESX/ESXi manages network bandwidth and disk resources on a per-host basis, using network traffic

shaping and a proportional share mechanism, respectively.

Resource Providers

Hosts and clusters are providers of physical resources.

For hosts, available resources are the host’s hardware specification, minus the resources used by the

virtualization software.

A cluster is a group of hosts. You can create a cluster using VMware® vCenter Server, and add multiple hosts

to the cluster. vCenter Server manages these hosts’ resources jointly: the cluster owns all of the CPU and

memory of all hosts. You can enable the cluster for joint load balancing or failover. See Chapter 5, “Creating a

DRS Cluster,” on page 45 for more information.

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Resource Consumers

Virtual machines are resource consumers.

The default resource settings assigned during creation work well for most machines. You can later edit the

virtual machine settings to allocate a share-based percentage of the total CPU and memory of the resource

provider or a guaranteed reservation of CPU and memory. When you power on that virtual machine, the server

checks whether enough unreserved resources are available and allows power on only if there are enough

resources. This process is called admission control.

A resource pool is a logical abstraction for flexible management of resources. Resource pools can be grouped

into hierarchies and used to hierarchically partition available CPU and memory resources. Accordingly,

resource pools can be considered both resource providers and consumers. They provide resources to child

resource pools and virtual machines, but are also resource consumers because they consume their parents’

resources. See Chapter 4, “Managing Resource Pools,” on page 37.

An ESX/ESXi host allocates each virtual machine a portion of the underlying hardware resources based on a

number of factors:

nTotal available resources for the ESX/ESXi host (or the cluster).

nNumber of virtual machines powered on and resource usage by those virtual machines.

nOverhead required to manage the virtualization.

nResource limits defined by the user.

Goals of Resource Management

When managing your resources, you should be aware of what your goals are.

In addition to resolving resource overcommitment, resource management can help you accomplish the

following:

nPerformance Isolation—prevent virtual machines from monopolizing resources and guarantee

predictable service rates.

nEfficient Utilization—exploit undercommitted resources and overcommit with graceful degradation.

nEasy Administration—control the relative importance of virtual machines, provide flexible dynamic

partitioning, and meet absolute service-level agreements.

Configuring Resource Allocation Settings

When available resource capacity does not meet the demands of the resource consumers (and virtualization

overhead), administrators might need to customize the amount of resources that are allocated to virtual

machines or to the resource pools in which they reside.

Use the resource allocation settings (shares, reservation, and limit) to determine the amount of CPU and

memory resources provided for a virtual machine. In particular, administrators have several options for

allocating resources.

nReserve the physical resources of the host or cluster.

nEnsure that a certain amount of memory for a virtual machine is provided by the physical memory of the

ESX/ESXi machine.

nGuarantee that a particular virtual machine is always allocated a higher percentage of the physical

resources than other virtual machines.

nSet an upper bound on the resources that can be allocated to a virtual machine.

vSphere Resource Management Guide

10 VMware, Inc.

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