Introducing the DRS Scores for VMware

Expansion of BVQ° monitoring features

05.10.2023 - Team BVQ°

 

Monitoring and analyzing IT infrastructures is essential for efficient operations in today’s business world. To enhance monitoring and analysis capabilities for VMware, the DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduler) Score has been integrated into BVQ°. This tool provides deep insights into VMware environments and delivers detailed information about current VMware resource utilization. BVQ° makes this available across analysis, monitoring, reporting and alerting.

Definition: DRS Score

The DRS Score is a metric used to evaluate the efficiency and balance of VMware clusters. It is available for vCenter, clusters, hosts and virtual machines.
It enables detailed analysis from the cluster level down to individual VMs, helping to identify inefficiencies, bottlenecks and resource overloads early on.

The integration of the DRS Score significantly enhances VMware monitoring capabilities. Thanks to BVQ°’s end-to-end capabilities, other platforms such as Kubernetes, SAN and storage systems also benefit from this extension.

 

Example view of BVQ°

 

In this example, the DRS Score is integrated into the monitoring of all VMware vCenters (bottom right). It clearly shows which systems are overloaded and where VM performance is being impacted by bottlenecks.


The orange line in the dashboard highlights a poorly balanced vCenter, which can be used as a starting point to drill down and identify the affected hosts and virtual machines.

Functional overview

  • The DRS Score in BVQ° is available at the vCenter, cluster, host and VM levels.
  • An optimal DRS Score of 100% indicates that all servers are contributing evenly to the workload, while lower values indicate imbalances.
  • With the implementation of the DRS Score, BVQ° provides a strategic tool to ensure workload balance in virtualized systems.
  • These insights support resource, cost and energy optimization, increasing data center efficiency and contributing to sustainability.

 

More details can be found in our BVQ° WIKI: Understand VMware DRS Scores