When the workload in your environment becomes imbalanced, you can move the workload across your objects to rebalance the overall workload. The container for the rebalance action can be a data center or a custom data center, and the objects that are moved are the virtual machines in the suggested list provided by the action.
DRS Must be Activated on Clusters
Your vCenter Server instance must have a cluster that passes a DRS-activated check for the Rebalance Container action to appear in the Actions drop-down menu.
To get the Rebalance Container action from a custom data center or data center, and the related alerts, you must have the following:
- A vCenter Adapter configured with the actions activated for each vCenter Server instance
- A vCenter Server instance with at least one cluster that is DRS-activated.
If your cluster does not have DRS fully automated, the Rebalance Container action notifies you that one or more clusters under the selected container do not have DRS set to fully automated.
To ensure that the Rebalance Container action is available in your environment, you must add DRS. Then, wait one collection cycle for the Rebalance Container action to appear.
You Must Have Access to All Objects in the Container
If you have access to all objects in a cluster, data center, or custom data center, you can run the Rebalance Container action to move virtual machines to other clusters. When you do not have access to all of the objects in the container, the Rebalance Container action is not available.
How the Rebalance Container Action Works
If two data centers are experiencing extreme differences in workload - one high and one low - use the Rebalance Container action to balance the workload across those objects. For example, if the CPU demand on a host in one data center exceeds its available CPU capacity, critical pressure occurs on the host. To identify the cause of stress, monitor the CPU demand. Some virtual machines on each host might be experiencing high CPU demand, whereas others might be experiencing a low demand.
The Rebalance Container action moves all affected objects in the suggested list provided by the action to balance the workload. If you do not want to act on the entire set of objects to resolve the problem with workload, you can use the Move VM action to move an individual object.
When workloads become imbalanced, the following alerts can trigger on data centers and custom data centers. These alerts are deactivated by default in the policies.
- Custom data center has unbalanced workload
- Data center has unbalanced workload
When the workloads on hosts in a data center or custom data center differ significantly, click and verify whether the alert triggered. For example, to verify whether the alert triggered on a custom data center, check the alert named Custom data center has unbalanced workload. You can click the alert to view the causes of the alert and identify the source of the imbalance problem on the Summary tab.
To display the recommendations about the objects to move so that you can rebalance the workload, click the Rebalance Container action on the Summary tab. The recommendations indicate that you move one or more virtual machines to another host. When you click OK, a pop-up message provides a link to track the status of the action in Recent Tasks.
The action moves the virtual machines identified in the recommendation to the host machine that has a low workload or stress. You can view the status of the action in the list of recent tasks in . You can also use the vSphere Web Client to view the status of the action and the performance for the host.
After the action runs and vRealize Operations performs several collection cycles, view the workload on the data center to confirm that the workload was rebalanced and that the alert is gone.
Where You Run the Action
You can run the Rebalance Container action from the Actions menu for a data center or custom data center, or you can provide it as a suggested action on an alert.
- From the left menu click Environment, select an object, click the Details tab, click Views, and select a view of type List.
- From the left menu click Environment, select an object, click the Environment tab, and select an object in the list view.
- From the left menu click Environment, click Inventory, then click the List tab, and select an object in the list.
- In configured alert recommendations.
- In the Object List and Topology Graph dashboard widgets.
Action Recommendations
Review the following information about the hosts and virtual machines to ensure that you are submitting the action for the correct objects.
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| Virtual Machine | Name of the virtual machine on the host that is experiencing an excessive workload. |
| Source Cluster | Name of the cluster on which the virtual machine is running. |
| Datastores | Datastore associated with the virtual machine. |
| Destination Cluster | Cluster where the virtual machine is to be moved. DRS selects the host automatically. |
| Reason | Describes the action to be taken and the reason why the move is suggested. For example, the recommendation is to move part of the workload on the cluster to another cluster to reduce the imbalance in CPU demand. |
| Parent vCenter | Identifies the vCenter Server adapter associated with the affected cluster. |
After you click OK, the next dialog box provides the task ID and a link to the task list.
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| Recent Tasks | To view the status of the job and verify that the job finished, click Recent Tasks. |
| OK | To close the dialog box without further action, click OK. |
