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One of the most important features of VMware ESX Server / Virtual Infrastructure is the ability to
configure Cluster Pools and Resource Pools. How can these pools help you and what is the difference
between them? Let's find out.
if one of the physical hosts goes down, the other physical host starts up the virtual
guests machines that the original virtual host was running (VM HA).
if one physical host is over utilized by a virtual guest, that virtual guest is moved to
the other physical host (VMware DRS, discussed in the resource pool section, below).
Both of these features use VMotion to move these virtual guests from one system to another.
How do you identify a cluster inside Virtual Center? A cluster has an icon that looks like a
group of 3 servers, like this:
When you click on the Cluster icon, on the right, you will see that status of that cluster and you can
configure the cluster. Here is what it looks like:
Notice how you are able to view the total CPU &Memory resources, number of hosts, total
number of processors, total number of virtual machines, and the migrations that have been
performed. This cluster has VMware HA and fully automated DRS enabled. That means that
if any of the servers in the cluster fail, the other machines will automatically take over those
virtual guests. Also, with automated DRS, the virtual guests will be automatically migrated to
obtain the best possible performance for all machines, according to the resource pool settings.
You would want to use a pool to ensure that CPU and RAM resources are allocated fairly
across systems or to ensure that certain systems are giving the resources they need to perform
the tasks that the application on that server demand.
Inside VMware Virtual Center, Resource pools will be shown with the "pie chart" icon, like
this:
Resource pools can be contained inside Clusters. Clusters contain hosts or resource pools,
and and "Datacenters" contain Hosts and Clusters.
When setting up a resource pool, you must configure the limit, reservation, and share settings for
both CPU & Memory for all virtual guest machines in the pool. Here is what that configuration
windows looks like:
Back on the Resource Allocation tab for that resource pool, you can see a summary of the resources
used by each VM and how that related to the resource pool:
Summary
In summary, VMware ESX Clusters & Resource Pools are very important pieces of
VMware's Virtual Infrastructure (VI). To take advantage of all that VI has to offer, you must
understand and properly configure VMware Clusters & Resource pools. With clusters &
resource pools, you can ensure that one system doesn't run away with the resources of the
others, ensure that your virtual server load is balanced, and guarantee that if a virtual server
goes down, all systems in that cluster will be brought up on another physical server.