Allocation Pool Allocation Model in VMware Cloud Director

In VMware Cloud Director, with the allocation pool allocation model, a percentage of the resources you allocate from the provider virtual data center (VDC) are committed to the organization VDC.

You can specify the percentage for both CPU and memory. This percentage is known as the percentage guarantee factor, and it allows you to overcommit resources.

As a system administrator, you can configure allocation-pool organization VDCs to be elastic or non-elastic. Elasticity is a global setting that affects all allocation-pool organization VDCs. See Modify VMware Cloud Director General System Settings.

By default, allocation-pool organization VDCs have an elastic allocation pool enabled. Systems upgraded from VMware Cloud Director 5.1 that have allocation-pool organization VDCs with virtual machines spanning multiple resource pools have elastic allocation pool enabled by default.

When allocation-pool VDCs have the elastic allocation pool feature enabled, the organization VDC spans and uses all resource pools associated with its provider VDC. As a result, vCPU frequency is now a mandatory parameter for an allocation pool.

Set the vCPU frequency and percentage guarantee factor in such a way that enough virtual machines can be deployed on the organization VDC without CPU being a bottleneck factor.

When a virtual machine is created, the placement engine places it on a provider VDC resource pool that best fits the requirements of the virtual machine. A subresource pool is created for this organization VDC under the provider VDC resource pool, and the virtual machine is placed under that subresource pool.

When the virtual machine powers on, the placement engine checks the provider VDC resource pool to ensure that it still can power on the virtual machine. If not, the placement engine moves the virtual machine to a provider VDC resource pool with sufficient resources to run the virtual machine. A subresource pool for the organization VDC is created if one does not exist.

The subresource pool is configured with sufficient resources to run the new virtual machine. The subresource pool's memory reservation is increased by the virtual machine's configured memory size times the percentage guarantee factor for the organization VDC. The subresource pool's CPU reservation is increased by the number of vCPU configured for the virtual machine times the vCPU specified at the organization VDC level times the percentage guarantee factor for CPU set at the organization VDC level. If the elastic allocation pool feature is enabled, the subresource pool's memory limit is increased by the virtual machine's configured memory size, and the subresource pool's CPU limit is increased by the number of vCPUs that the virtual machine is configured with times the vCPU frequency specified at the organization VDC level. The virtual machine is reconfigured to set its memory and CPU reservation to zero and the virtual machine placement engine places the virtual machine on a provider VDC resource pool.

With the elastic allocation pool allocation model, the limits are monitored and managed by VMware Cloud Director only. If the elastic feature is deactivated, the resource pool limit is set additionally.

The benefits of the allocation-pool model are that a virtual machine can take advantage of the resources of an idle virtual machine on the same subresource pool. This model can take advantage of new resources added to the provider VDC.

In rare cases, a virtual machine is switched from the resource pool it was assigned at creation to a different resource pool at power-on because of a lack of resources on the original resource pool. This change might involve a minor cost to move the virtual machine disk files to a new resource pool.

When the elastic allocation pool feature is deactivated, the behavior of allocation-pool organization VDCs is similar to the allocation pool model in VMware Cloud Director 1.5. In this model, the vCPU frequency is not configurable. Overcommitment is controlled by setting the percentage of resources guaranteed.

By default, in an allocation pool VDC, virtual machines obtain their reservation, limit, and shares settings from the settings of the VDC. To create or reconfigure a virtual machine with custom resource allocation settings for both CPU and memory, you can use the vCloud API. See VMware Cloud Director API Programming Guide.