Changing the default behavior of Distributed Power Management in vSphere

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

In vCenter Server 5.1 and 5.5, the default behavior of Distributed Power Management (DPM) has been changed to make the feature less aggressive. This helps prevent performance degradation for virtual machines when active memory is low but consumed memory is high. For more information see KB 2059868

This article provides information about changing the default behavior of Distributed Power Management in vCenter Server 5.1 and 5.5.

Note: This configuration is available in vCenter Server 5.1 Update 2c and later and in all the versions of vCenter Server 5.5

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 5.5.x
VMware vCenter Server 5.1.x

Resolution

You can change the default behavior of DPM to the behavior seen in earlier versions of ESXi. The new DPM metric is:

X%*IdleConsumedMemory + active memory

X% is adjustable and is set to 25% by default. Setting this value to 0 reverts to the more aggressive DRS behavior found in previous vSphere releases.

To adjust this setting:

1. Log in to the vSphere Client as an Administrator.
2. In the vSphere Client, right-click the cluster, then click Edit Settings > vSphere DRS.
3. Click Advanced Options.
4. Click in the area under the Options heading and type PercentIdleMBInMemDemand.
5. Click in the area under the Value heading (to the right of the previously entered advanced option name) and type the value 0.
6. Click OK.
7. Click OK.