VMware Labs released a new Fling called Proactive DRS. The download is available as OVA and is about 1.5GB.

Proactive DRS was the winning entry in last year’s 2012 Open Innovation Contest.

Quote taken from the Fling page:

What is ProactiveDRS? It is a way for DRS to react to changes in the virtual cluster, and to act on predicted changes in resource demands before hosts become stressed. For example, if you have a VM that historically uses 100% CPU at 8am every morning, ProactiveDRS makes sure that the CPU resources will be available for that VM before 8am. These actions ensure that your cluster runs smoother and reduces the amount of reactive VM rebalances that occur.

Features

• Given an advance forecast/prediction of each VM’s resource demands, e.g., CPU and Memory, ProactiveDRS seeks to reorganize the placement of VMs to best balance the current resource demands while taking early actions to accommodate the future/predicted resource demands.
• Sample actions include, but are not limited to, proactive vMotions (migrations) and proactively powering on a new physical host to accept VMs whose resource demands are expected to spike beyond the available resources of their current physical host.

Requirements

You need to have DRS and VMware Operations Manager (vC Ops) v5.6 or newer installed.

Installation

There are 8 steps to follow, it is advised to use the vCenter Server Appliance combined with VMware Operations Manager v5.6.

Niels Engelen

Working as a Principal Analyst in Product Management for Veeam Software with an interest in anything virtual and cloud with a strong focus on AWS, Azure and Microsoft 365. He is also a VMware Certified Professional, a Veeam Certified Architect and gained the VMware vExpert award (2012-2022).