VMware Aria Operations supports allocation aware advanced workload placement between VMware Aria Automation and VMware Aria Operations for initial placement of virtual machines. The placement recommendation is based on allocation settings that are defined in the VMware Aria Operations policy. The advanced workload placement awareness for allocation works with the existing demand model.

Need for Allocation Model Awareness

The advanced workload placement based on demand model, depends on the actual demand for resources in a cluster and datastore. If the allocation is based only on the utilization of resources, then it might result in over allocation or over provisioning of resources in clusters. To avoid this, VMware Aria Operations provides allocation model awareness. Allocation model awareness addresses issues related to over allocation or over provisioning by providing you the option of setting the appropriate overcommit ratios in the VMware Aria Operations policy.

The advanced workload placement feature uses the demand model by default and cannot be turned off. To activate the allocation model in addition to the demand model, in VMware Aria Operations configure the appropriate overcommit ratios in policy settings for the preferred clusters, datastores, and datastore clusters.

Prerequisites

  • VMware Aria Operations is configured as an endpoint in VMware Aria Automation,this happens automatically in case of VMware Aria Operations
  • Advanced placement policy in the Cloud zone must be activated
  • vCenter Cloud account instance on which the initial provision is done should be same across VMware Aria Operations and VMware Aria Automation
  • Overcommit ratios in VMware Aria Operations policy must be configured for the following:
    • For CPU and Memory overcommit ratio - Cluster Compute Resource
    • For Disk overcommit ratio - Datastore and Datastore Cluster

How to Activate Advanced Placement Policy

To activate the advanced placement policy, in VMware Aria Automation Cloud Assembly Service, navigate to Infrastructure > Cloud Zone > Summary tab and set the placement policy to ADVANCED.
Note: If VMware Aria Operations returns no recommendations, then under the placement policy, you can specify if you want VMware Aria Automation to fall back to its default placement using the toggle option.

How to Activate Allocation Awareness in Advanced Workload Placement Feature

To activate Allocation awareness in VMware Aria Operations perform the following actions.

  1. From the left menu, click Configure >Policies.
  2. Select Policy Definition.
  3. Select the Active policy which is assigned to the Cluster Compute resource under Cloud Zones and make the required changes.
  4. Click Edit Policy and navigate to the Capacity tile.
  5. Select the Object Type as Cluster Compute Resource and activate the Allocation Model.
  6. Set the overcommit ratio as per your requirement and click Save.
  7. Repeat Step 3 to Step 5 for datastore cluster, vSAN datastores and local datastores.

After the configuration is completed, VMware Aria Automation Cloud makes a provisioning request to VMware Aria Operations, and the advanced workload placement engine calculates the recommendation and shares it with VMware Aria Automation. To know the changes after the configuration, view the Allocation metrics and Demand metrics for the cluster.

Note: The allocation model awareness enhancement is limited to advanced workload placement feature. This capability is not extended to workload optimization feature.