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Table Of Contents
For each DRS cluster that the virtual machines being powered on belong to, there is a single
recommendation, which contains all the prerequisites (or no recommendation). All such cluster-specific
recommendations are presented together under the Power On Recommendations tab.
When a nonautomatic group power-on attempt is made, and virtual machines not subject to an initial
placement recommendation (that is, the virtual machines on standalone hosts or in non-DRS clusters) are
included, vCenter Server attempts to power them on automatically. If these power-ons are successful,
they are listed under the Started Power-Ons tab. Any virtual machines that fail to power-on are listed
under the Failed Power-Ons tab.
Example: Group Power-on
The user selects three virtual machines in the same data center for a group power-on attempt. The first
two virtual machines (VM1 and VM2) are in the same DRS cluster (Cluster1), while the third virtual
machine (VM3) is on a standalone host. VM1 is in automatic mode and VM2 is in manual mode. For this
scenario, the user is presented with an initial placement recommendation for Cluster1 (under the Power
On Recommendations tab) which consists of actions for powering on VM1 and VM2. An attempt is
made to power on VM3 automatically and, if successful, it is listed under the Started Power-Ons tab. If
this attempt fails, it is listed under the Failed Power-Ons tab.
Virtual Machine Migration
Although DRS performs initial placements so that load is balanced across the cluster, changes in virtual
machine load and resource availability can cause the cluster to become unbalanced. To correct such
imbalances, DRS generates migration recommendations.
If DRS is enabled on the cluster, load can be distributed more uniformly to reduce the degree of this
imbalance. For example, the three hosts on the left side of the following figure are unbalanced. Assume
that Host 1, Host 2, and Host 3 have identical capacity, and all virtual machines have the same
configuration and load (which includes reservation, if set). However, because Host 1 has six virtual
machines, its resources might be overused while ample resources are available on Host 2 and Host 3.
DRS migrates (or recommends the migration of) virtual machines from Host 1 to Host 2 and Host 3. On
the right side of the diagram, the properly load balanced configuration of the hosts that results appears.
vSphere Resource Management
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