Applying Latency Sensitivity to Virtual Machines in VMware Cloud Director

Products

• VMware Cloud Director

Issue/Introduction

• A situation occurs where latency sensitivity needs to be applied to virtual machines, as in the following:
  
  Configure the Virtual Machine Latency Sensitivity

Environment

VMware Cloud Director 10.x

Cause

This advanced option is not explicitly exposed in the VMware Cloud Director user interface, so additional configuration is required to apply this setting.

Resolution

If the organization VDC is using the flex allocation model or is a reservation pool VDC, the latency sensitivity setting can be set as an advanced option on the virtual machine using the following steps:

1. Create and configure a new sizing policy to apply to the virtual machine, as in the following:
   
   Create a VM Sizing Policy in VMware Cloud Director
   
   
2. Before saving the sizing policy, add the following key and value setting in the Special VM Configuration Settings section:
   
   key: sched.cpu.latencySensitivity
   value: high
   
   *NOTE: This configuration cannot be changed after the sizing policy has been created.
   
   
3. Assign the sizing policy to the organization VDC, as discussed in the document below:
   
   Add a VM Sizing Policy to an Organization VDC in VMware Cloud Director
   
   
4. Navigate to the virtual machine in the tenant user interface and assign the sizing policy.

*Please note that this setting will require the reservation of the full CPU and memory for the virtual machine and unlimited configured for the limits. If this is not configured as part of the sizing policy, please confirm that this requirement is met on the virtual machine before applying the sizing policy.

For organization VDCs using another allocation model, there are limitations that will prevent this setting from being applied consistently and moving the virtual machine or converting the VDC will need to be considered if this setting is required.