The Reclamation dashboard helps you manage various types of reclamation that can be carried out on VMs and datastore. It is designed for both the Capacity team and the Operations team.

How to Use the Dashboard

  • Overall Analysis

    The scoreboard provides a summary of the total reclamation.

    You can select either a data center, a cluster, or a datastore. The datastore level is required as orphaned disks do not have VM association, hence it is not related to any cluster. The Datastore table only drives the snapshot table.

    Powered-off VMs Distribution Size, Idle VMs Distribution by Memory Footprint, and Snapshots Distribution by Size charts display summary information.

    Adjust the bucket size in the charts to suit your operational requirements. The reclamation potentials are presented as three bar charts, each corresponds to an area you can reclaim:
    • Powered off VMs that are no longer needed contribute to wasted disk usage. Consider deleting them to free up space or moving them to archival storage.
    • Idle VMs are running, but not being used actively. These VMs consume memory that may be used by active VMs. Consider removing these VMs to reduce memory contention.
    • Snapshots are meant to be temporary and can cause performance issues and waste disk space if not deleted after a few days.

    When reviewing each of the three tables observe that they are sorted by the largest reclamation opportunities. This allows you to get the greatest benefit from the least amount of effort. For example, focus on snapshots first, as it does not involve changing the VM. For the powered off VMs, you may want to consider VMs that have been powered off longer and these are more likely to be unneeded. Idle VMs can be challenging to reclaim since they are still running, so you might prioritize powered off VMs before attempting to reclaim idle VMs.

    The 99P CPU Usage column displays the CPU usage at the 99th percentile during the time period. It is an easy way to check if it is indeed idle.

  • VM Analysis
    To analyze VMs for reclamation opportunities, select a VM from one of the three tables (Powered Off VM, Idle VMs, or VM Snapshots). The selected VM will populate the widgets with the following details:
    • Powered off over time displays the amount of time a VM has been powered off.
    • CPU Usage over time provides insights into the aggregate CPU usage, including peak usage periods. This way you can validate that an idle VM has not had any brief usage.
    • VM Snapshot over time provides you with an understanding of the age and growth of snapshots on the VM. Watch for fast growing snapshots, as these can quickly consume disk space.
    • Contexts of selected VM is a summary of the VM configuration information.

Points to Note

To organize your reclaim efforts, it is helpful to create custom groups to make it easier to filter by department or VM owner. This can make it easier to seek approvals and communicate with anyone who may be impacted.