Virtual machine resources

[kevin79]

I'm looking at the configuration of my virtual machines. When I edit the virtual machine settings and go to the Resources tab, some of my VMs have Normal for CPU shares and some have custom. I know I never set these and my boss didn't either. Should normal be fine for all of my virtual machines? If so, can I set my important ones (Exchange) to have High CPU and Memory shares to improve performance?

[Rockapot · Accepted solution]

These will only work under a resource contention scenario. Do you have a resource constrainted environment currently?

If you configure the Exchange box for instance with High CPU values then it will be assigned with higher resources than that of another VM's but only when resource constraints occur on the ESX host

Best bet is to have a read of this, (based on ESX3.5 however still relevant.... http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35/esx_3/r35u2/vi3_35_25_u2_resource_mgmt.pdf

Hope this helps

Carl

[kevin79]

Thanks for the info. My enviroment is not resource constrained, so it doesn't matter what these values are set at, correct?

[Troy_Clavell]

in my opinion, especially if your enviornment is not resourse constrained, let the cluster handle it. Maybe just set DRS to be fully automated and a little more agressive and you should be good.

I am not a big fan of resource pools beyond the cluster itself.

just my two cents.

[Selekta]

Personally I would set them all to normal. So long as there are no resource constraints you will be fine. At least if they are all set the same you will both know if someone else starts playing with the settings.

[kevin79]

How do you let the cluster handle it? Is there a way to not set them?

[Troy_Clavell]

under the Resource Allocation tab just set all your Shares to "Normal". Set your DRS settings to maybe 3, and in my opinion that is good.

[kevin79]

Great. Thanks!