frankdenneman.nl

The public Shaming of Resource Pool-as-a-Folder User

by


Yesterday there was some public shaming done of Antony Spiteri. He was outed that he was using vSphere resource pool as folders.


A funny thread and he truly deserved all the public shaming by the community members ;). All fun aside, using resource pools as folders are not recommended by VMware. As I described in the new vSphere 6.5 DRS white paper available at vSphere central:
Correct use: Resource pools are an excellent construct to isolate a particular amount of resources for a group of virtual machines without having to micro-manage resource setting for each individual virtual machine. A reservation set at the resource pool level guarantees each virtual machine inside the resource pool access to these resources. Depending on the activity of these virtual machines these virtual machines can operate without any contention.
Incorrect use: Resource pools should not be used as a form of folders within the inventory view of the cluster. Resource pools consume resources from the cluster and distribute these amongst its child objects within the resource pool; this can be additional resource pools and virtual machines. Due to the isolation of resources, using resource pools as folders in a heavily utilized vSphere cluster can lead to an unintended level of performance degradation for some virtual machines inside or outside the resource pool.
Understanding this behavior allows you to design a correct resource pool structure. Currently, I’m working on a new vSphere DRS Resource Pool white paper which sheds some new light on the distribution of resources under normal conditions and under load (the Resource Pool Pie Paradox). I will keep you posted!

Comments

  1. Michael Stump says

    In defense of Mr. Spiteri, the icon for Resource Pools is way cooler than the icon for Folders. Aesthetically speaking, he is correct.

  2. tom miller says

    I’ve been teaching this because of the info in the HA books, I’d like to see it stated the same for vApps. I’ve seen them used as folders as well. I assume they are managed differently from folders as well and cause overhead for VCSA as well.

  3. Brian says

    On a standalone ESXi you don’t have VM folders to use… But you still need some organisation in there.
    Give us VM folders for our standalone hosts and I’ll stop using resource pools wrongly.

  4. Dan says

    Will anyone be informing the vCloud Director development team of this? The vDC-as-resource-pool concept is implemented so broadly as to effectively be a form of resource pool-as-a-folder. In several use cases it’s effectively “customer name’s VMs go here.”

    • Frank Denneman says

      Dan, can you elaborate? Isn’t that the premise of vCD? Multi-tenancy? By using RPs you can isolate resources from cluster level and distribute amongst the child-objects of that tenant.

  5. Vitaly says

    I guess it is not correct to blame VCD team. Do you remember that you are defining resource allocation model and resources during oVDC creation? This is exactly resource pool 🙂