A DRS cluster on vCenter Server 4.x and 5.x shows the warning: Load imbalanced

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
On a VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) cluster, on vCenter Server 4.x and 5.x, you see any or all of this behavior:

• Your cluster is unbalanced
• The warning:
  
  Load imbalanced
  
  
• This issue may occur in an environment with a large number of relatively low demand virtual machines.

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 5.1.x
VMware vCenter Server 5.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 5.5.x
VMware vCenter Server 4.1.x
VMware vCenter Server 4.0.x

Resolution

This is a known issue affecting vCenter Server 4.0.x, 4.1.x, and 5.x.

Note: vCenter Server 5.0 Update 1 improves the situation with this issue but does not resolve it entirely.

To resolve this issue, balance the DRS cluster:

For vCenter Server 5.1:

1. Host showing 0 Mhz for CPU and Memory Resource utilization
   
2. Right click and Disconnect the host with no Resource usage.
3. Right click and Connect the host.
   

For vCenter Server 4.1 and 5.0:

1. Right-click the DRS cluster and click Edit Settings.
2. Click VMware DRS, then click Advanced Options.
3. Click in the Option column and enter:
   
   MinGoodness
   
   Note: Do not change the case of MinGoodness.
   
   
4. Click in the Value column and enter 0.
5. Repeat the above steps for type CostBenefit and change the value to 0.
6. Click OK twice.
7. After a few minutes, check to ensure that the load is balanced and that the warning no longer appears.
   
   Note: These changes may result in more DRS load balancing activity in the cluster.
   

For vCenter Server 4.0:

1. Right-click the DRS cluster and click Edit Settings.
2. Click VMware DRS, then click Advanced Options.
3. Click in the Option column and enter:
   
   MinGoodness
   
   Note: Do not change the case of MinGoodness.
   
   
4. Click in the Value column and enter 1.
5. Click OK twice.
6. After a few minutes, check to ensure that the load is balanced and that the warning no longer appears.