frankdenneman Frank Denneman is the Chief Technologist for AI at VMware by Broadcom. He is an author of the vSphere host and clustering deep dive series, as well as a podcast host for the Unexplored Territory podcast. You can follow him on Twitter @frankdenneman

There is a new fling in town: DRMdiagnose

1 min read

This week the DRMdiagnose fling is published. Produced by the resource management team and just in case you are wondering, DRM stands for Distributed Resource Manager; the internal code for DRS. Download DRMdiagnose at the VMware fling site. Please note that this fling only works on vSphere 5.1 environments
Purpose of DRMdiagnose
This tool is created to understand the impact on the virtual machines own performance and the impact on other virtual machines in the cluster if the resource allocation settings of a virtual machine are changed. DRMdiagnose compares the current resource demand of the virtual machine and suggest changes to the resource allocation settings to achieve the appropriate performance. This tool can assist you to meet service level agreements by providing feedback on desired resource entitlement. Although you might know what performance you want for a virtual machine, you might not be aware of the impact or consequences an adjustments might have on other parts of the resource environment or cluster policies. DRMdiagnose provides recommendations that provides the meets the resource allocation requirement of the virtual machines with the least amount of impact. A DRMdiagnose recommendation could look like this:

Increase CPU size of VM Webserver by 1
Increase CPU shares of VM Webserver by 4000
Increase memory size of VM Database01 by 800 MB
Increase memory shares of VM Database01 by 2000
Decrease CPU reservation of RP Silver by 340 MHz
Decrease CPU reservation of VM AD01 by 214 MHz
Increase CPU reservation of VM Database01 by 1000 MHz

How does it work
DRMdiagnose reviews the DRS cluster snapshot. This snapshot contains the current cluster state and the resource demand of the virtual machines. The cluster snapshot is stored on the vCenter server. These snapshot files can be found:

  • vCenter server appliance: /var/log/vmware/vpx/drmdump/clusterX/
  • vCenter server Windows 2003: %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Application Data\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\Logs\drmdump\clusterX\
  • vCenter server Windows 2008: %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\Logs\drmdump\clusterX\

The fling can be run in three modes:

  1. Default: Given a link to a drmdump, it lists all the VMs in the cluster, and their current demands and entitlements.
  2. Guided: Given a link to a drmdump, and a target allocation for the VM, generates a set of recommendations to achieve it.
  3. Auto: Given a link to a drmdump, generates a recommendation to satisfy the demand of the most distressed VM (the VM for which the gap between demand and entitlement is the highest).

Two things to note:
One: The fling does not have run on the vCenter server itself. Just install the fling on your local windows or linux system, copy over the latest drmdump file and run the fling. And second the drmdump file is zipped (GZ), unzip the file first to and run DRMdiagnose against the .dump file. A “normal” dumpfile should look like this:
00-drmdump
How to run:
Open a command prompt in windows:
01-command-prompt
This command will provide the default output and provide you a list with CPU and Memory demand as well as entitlement. Instead of showing it on screen I chose to port it to a file as the output contains a lot of data.
A next article will expand on auto-mode and guided-mode use of DRMdiagnose. In the mean time, I would suggest to download DRMdiagnose and review your current environment.

frankdenneman Frank Denneman is the Chief Technologist for AI at VMware by Broadcom. He is an author of the vSphere host and clustering deep dive series, as well as a podcast host for the Unexplored Territory podcast. You can follow him on Twitter @frankdenneman

8 Replies to “There is a new fling in town: DRMdiagnose”

  1. Hi Frank, very nice fling! I was already working on a powershell script that retrive a top ten list of the vm with the greatest gap between the demand and the entitlement counter. Is it the right way to compute it ? Thanks.

  2. Guess I’m ding someting wrong as it fails…
    —— In-memory logs start ——–
    mem> 2013-03-01T07:19:34.818Z [01392 info ‘Default’] Process attached
    —— In-memory logs end ——–
    2013-03-01T07:19:34.864Z [01392 info ‘Default’] Logging uses fast path: true
    2013-03-01T07:19:34.864Z [01392 info ‘Default’] Handling bora/lib logs with VmaCore facilities
    2013-03-01T07:19:34.864Z [01392 info ‘Default’] Initialized channel manager
    2013-03-01T07:19:34.864Z [01392 info ‘Default’] Current working directory: C:\Us
    ers\garybr\drmdiagnose
    2013-03-01T07:19:34.864Z [01392 info ‘Default’] ThreadPool windowsStackImmediate
    Commit = true
    2013-03-01T07:19:34.864Z [01392 info ‘ThreadPool’] Thread enlisted
    2013-03-01T07:19:34.864Z [01392 error ‘drmLogger’] Load snapshot: expecting version 116, got 71
    –>
    PANIC: ASSERT d:/build/ob/sb-1479871/bora/vpx/drs/algo/drmRebalanceModule.cpp:2748

    1. What happens if you use an older dump file?
      If you are using a storage DRS cluster in the environment, make sure you are selecting the dump files of the DRS cluster instead of the Storage DRS cluster:
      DRS: 2930283000-proposeActions.dump
      SDRS:3179820000-sioProposeActions.dump

  3. I think thats a version-thing, in our 5.0U2-environment it also doesn’t work. Is it really 5.1-only?
    F:\Sourcen\Vmware\VMware-drmdiagnose-win32-5.1.0-1479871\drmdiagnose>drmdiagnose
    .exe 2305556156-proposeActions.dump
    —— In-memory logs start ——–
    mem> 2013-03-01T10:11:02.019+01:00 [12680 info ‘Default’] Process attached
    —— In-memory logs end ——–
    2013-03-01T10:11:02.067+01:00 [12680 info ‘Default’] Logging uses fast path: tru
    e
    2013-03-01T10:11:02.067+01:00 [12680 info ‘Default’] Handling bora/lib logs with
    VmaCore facilities
    2013-03-01T10:11:02.068+01:00 [12680 info ‘Default’] Initialized channel manager
    2013-03-01T10:11:02.068+01:00 [12680 info ‘Default’] Current working directory:
    F:\Sourcen\Vmware\VMware-drmdiagnose-win32-5.1.0-1479871\drmdiagnose
    2013-03-01T10:11:02.068+01:00 [12680 info ‘Default’] ThreadPool windowsStackImme
    diateCommit = true
    2013-03-01T10:11:02.069+01:00 [12680 info ‘ThreadPool’] Thread enlisted
    2013-03-01T10:11:02.069+01:00 [12680 error ‘drmLogger’] Load snapshot: expecting
    version 116, got 105
    –>
    PANIC: ASSERT d:/build/ob/sb-1479871/bora/vpx/drs/algo/drmRebalanceModule.cpp:27
    48
    2013-03-01T10:11:04.049+01:00 [12680 info ‘Default’] Process detached
    2013-03-01T10:11:04.051+01:00 [12680 error ‘Default’] Alert:WARNING: This applic
    ation is not using QuickExit(). The exit code will be set to 0.@ d:/build/ob/sb-
    1479871/bora/vim/lib/vmacore/main/service.cpp:148
    –> Backtrace:
    –> backtrace[00] rip 100cf254
    –> backtrace[01] rip 100d06f7
    –> backtrace[02] rip 10078e67
    –> backtrace[03] rip 1007a89d
    –> backtrace[04] rip 10001366
    –> backtrace[05] rip 100013e3
    –> backtrace[06] rip 77549374
    –> backtrace[07] rip 775385c2
    –> backtrace[08] rip 775385e6
    –> backtrace[09] rip 7757d884
    –> backtrace[10] rip 7757da2b

  4. When I try to run the EXE the fling stops working and I get the following Error :
    Problem Event Name: BEX
    Application Name: drmdiagnose.exe
    Application Version: 0.0.0.0
    Application Timestamp: 50c03657
    Fault Module Name: MSVCR90.dll
    Fault Module Version: 9.0.30729.4926
    Fault Module Timestamp: 4a1743c1
    Exception Offset: 0002fef2
    Exception Code: c0000417
    Exception Data: 00000000
    OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.272.7
    Locale ID: 1033
    Additional Information 1: a9d8
    Additional Information 2: a9d8eeb3dc02e0a5c27916e9a8438c56
    Additional Information 3: de3d
    Additional Information 4: de3dafa612e61776a17c99d7ae09f9bd
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