Scheduling resource allocation

[sc_2111]

Is there a way to schedule an increase of resource allocation to a VM ?

We have a customer who runs an heavy job during the night on a VM and after virtualizing the server such job doubled it's running time.

As during the day the server's load does not justify a permanent increase of resources ( 2 cpu or more memory ) we'd like to grant them on schedule basis .

Thanks

[wobbly1]

I think this would require a reboot of the VM to recognise that it now has more resources available. If this is possible then one option could be to have two .vmx files, one for the day and one for at night. You could save the night time .vmx as .old during the day then script a shutdown, rename the day time .vmx to say .day then rename the night time .old vmx file to .vmx and reboot. At the end of the night you could repeat the process but in reserve so that at reboot the vm is one again using the day time .vmx file.

I'm sure there are probably easier options out there that someone can suggest

[bertdb]

you'll have to do that through the API. Write an external script that connects to VirtualCenter and does the required change (reservation/shares/vmotion to a powerful host) and schedule that script somewhere.

[bertdb]

have you tried giving this machine a high CPU reservation ? Did you see increased CPU ready time while that job was running ?

The benefit of a reservation is that when the machine is not using the reservation, that resource can be used by other machines. But as soon as the machine asks for the reserved resource, it is guaranteed to get it.

[sc_2111]

I did not make any reservation . I'll give it a try

As per the scripting tip , do you have any example or a source I can check examples for ?

thanks

[bertdb · Accepted solution]

http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/ contains downloads, and the downloads contain docs and example code.

good luck.