Manage Hardware for an ESXi Host by Using the VMware Host Client

When you log in to an ESXi host by using the VMware Host Client, you can manage PCI devices and configure power management settings.

Host Power Management Policies in ESXi

You can apply several power management features in ESXi that the host hardware provides to adjust the balance between performance and power. You can control how ESXi uses these features by selecting a power management policy.

Selecting a high-performance policy provides more absolute performance, but at lower efficiency and performance per watt. Low-power policies provide less absolute performance, but at higher efficiency.

You can select a policy for the host that you manage by using the VMware Host Client. If you do not select a policy, ESXi uses Balanced by default.

Table 1. CPU Power Management Policies

Power Management Policy	Description
High Performance	Do not use any power management features.
Balanced (Default)	Reduce energy consumption with minimal performance compromise
Low Power	Reduce energy consumption at the risk of lower performance
Custom	User-defined power management policy. Advanced configuration becomes available.

When a CPU runs at lower frequency, it can also run at lower voltage, which saves power. This type of power management is typically called Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS). ESXi attempts to adjust CPU frequencies so that virtual machine performance is not affected.

When a CPU is idle, ESXi can apply deep halt states, also known as C-states. The deeper the C-state, the less power the CPU uses, but it also takes longer for the CPU to start running again. When a CPU becomes idle, ESXi applies an algorithm to predict the idle state duration and chooses an appropriate C-state to enter. In power management policies that do not use deep C-states, ESXi uses only the shallowest halt state for idle CPUs, C1.

Change Power Management Policies in the VMware Host Client

Change the power management policies of the host that you are managing to control the energy consumption of your host.

Procedure

1. Click Manage in the VMware Host Client inventory and click Hardware.
2. Click Power Management and click Change policy.
   The available power management policies are displayed.
3. Select the policy that you want to apply and click OK.

Change the Hardware Label in the VMware Host Client

In the VMware Host Client, you can change the hardware label of all available PCI passthrough devices on a virtual machine. You use hardware labels to restrict the virtual machine placement to specific hardware instances. You can add all available devices with the same hardware label or with a blank hardware label to a virtual machine.

Procedure

1. Click Manage in the VMware Host Client inventory.
2. On the Hardware tab, click PCI Devices.
3. Select an available device from the list and click Hardware label.
   The toggle passthrough must be active for the selected device.
   The Edit Hardware Label dialog box appears.
4. Edit the hardware label and click Save to apply the changes.

Results

The new hardware label appears in the hardware label column.