vmware resource pools issue

[Lanz]

I was taught its wrong to use resource pools as organisational folders in vmware.

Someone I'm working with has 15 resource pools on their HA cluster, with about 120 VM's spread through them. Is it a correct statement to say:

Even though no settings are assigned to these pools, all use defaults, each pool only has 6% (100/15) of the cluster resource assigned to it, so if one of these pools has 6 VM's in it, each one will get 1% of the cluster. But if another resource pool only has 2 vm's, then each of those will get 3% of the cluster. - You end up with uneven performing VMs across the cluster even though you think they are the same.

 

[m4cc45]

You can change the view and create folders if you want an organised view. I wouldn't use resource pools.

To be honest though working out what resources each one has depends if he's nested them as well and what resources he's assigned to those pools. He could have the resources manually specified and everything manually input making it run acceptably.



M.

 

[ecksmen]

I was taught its wrong to use resource pools as organisational folders in vmware.

Someone I'm working with has 15 resource pools on their HA cluster, with about 120 VM's spread through them. Is it a correct statement to say:

Even though no settings are assigned to these pools, all use defaults, each pool only has 6% (100/15) of the cluster resource assigned to it, so if one of these pools has 6 VM's in it, each one will get 1% of the cluster. But if another resource pool only has 2 vm's, then each of those will get 3% of the cluster. - You end up with uneven performing VMs across the cluster even though you think they are the same.

No, they will all have equal shares.

 

[DRZ]

Just look in the resource allocation tab and you'll see what is what. It is loads more complicated than you're mentioning once you start looking at VMs with multiple vCPUs and reservations and so on.

I use resource pools to manage resources effectively but this has a side effect of organising things. It makes sense to group things like this to effectively prioritise services when things get tight (during a host outage, for example). Until then, the shares aren't doing anything anyway.

For example, my front end RDS boxes are in a resource pool, my middleware stuff is in a resource pool, my Citrix stuff is nested inside a resource pool by role (XenApp workers, PVS etc) with appropriate resources assigned. It is very neat and when resources get tight, the right things get what they need.

 

[Swarfega]

It's one thing that bugs me about ESXi is that in the free version you don't get to use folders. I would imagine though using the resources pools with no configuration will be fine. Still VMware should include folders for free but then they don't really want people to actually use their free software.

 

[Gerbil]

I would imagine though using the resources pools with no configuration will be fine.

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2010/02/22/the-resource-pool-priority-pie-paradox/

Even left at the defaults resource pools can have unintended effects. Bottom line is resource pools aren't folders. I met one guy on a course who had a PowerCli script that ran once per night that reallocated resource pool resources based on the number of VMs in them. That way his high priority VM pool still kept it's intended allocation of resources no matter how many VMs had been created or deleted else where.