What is Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS)?
by VCP Help on 19/01/09 at 8:00 pm
Put simply, VMware DRS is a feature of Virtual Center that allows monitoring and and controlling of ESX host workloads. With the Distributed Resource Scheduler enabled, you can set certain resource requirements for various virtual servers such as the minimum RAM required or maximum CPU allowed to be consumed. In the DRS options, you can select manual, semi-automatic, or automatic management of the hosts and VMs so that you can maximize host utilization, reduced power, and guarantee service levels for your various VMs.
DRS takes advantage of VMotion so that it can move a VM between two servers without incurring downtime. In the automatic mode, an algorithm will determine the optimal deployment of virtual machines based upon the min/max settings you dictate, while the manual and semi-automatic modes allow you to have a finer grained level of control over VM movement.
In configuring DRS, you will create various logical structures in the Virtual Center interface such as “datacenters”, “clusters” and “resource pools”. Each of these logical constructs operates with DRS to control which hosts are allowed to run which VMs and which VMs can consume what resources. I’ll get more into these ideas in the detailed information pages.
