How to configure VMware Distributed Power Management (DPM) |
Friday, 06 November 2009 by Michel Roth | |||
“Going Green” is “all the rage”. Likely, you have seen the IBM commercials where the birds and squirrels come out and the screen turns green when the company chooses to “go green”. Because of this, “going green” has become a cliché. However, the practical applications of this make complete sense. By using virtualization and energy saving features like DPM, you can save as much as 40% in electricity costs as well as all the other benefits of using virtualization. VMware’s Distributed Power Manager (DPM) is part of VMware’s Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS). Just as DRS works to optimize the resource load across multiple ESX host servers, DPM can fit into that by migrating VM guests off of servers that are not in use and shut the host system down. Even better, once you configure DRS, using DPM is virtually a “checkbox away”. Here is how VMware describes DPM- “VMware DRS includes experimental distributed power management (DPM) capabilities. When DPM is enabled, the system compares cluster- and host-level capacity to the demands of virtual machines running in the cluster. Based on the results of the comparison, DPM recommends (or automatically implements) actions that can reduce the power consumption of the cluster.” Why have servers powered on that are not needed and are not in use? This is like leaving the light on in your office when you go home for the day – a waste of electricity and of your company’s money. DRS is able to automatically power off the servers that are not needed. Let’s find out how to configure DPM.
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