Distributing resources evenly across all virtual machines

Question

I have a physical server running VMware vSphere 5 and 3 VM running on top of it.

The physical server Xeon X3440 2.53GHz, 6GB of RAM and 500GB of HDD.

As for my VMs, there are 2 Linux (CentOS) and 1 Windows Server 2003. These VM use the default recommended settings when I create a new VM.

Is there any best practices on how to equally distribute the resources on my physical server to all VMWare? Or should I just stick to using the recommended / default settings provided by VM? Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

Is there any best practices on how to equally distribute the resources on my physical server to all VMWare?

Yes. Observe what the VM's need, then act accordingly.

No, sorry, there is no glass ball that out of thin air gives you the best disstribution.

MS has a product (SCVMM) that can reorganize VM'S ccording to predicted load - generated from historical load profiles (i.e. some VM's busyo n the night only etc.).

But without having more information available - no.

Similar in your case. You dont say anthing about the VM's. In general, give each VM what it needs or you want it to ahve, let VmWare oranize the rest. Either the hardware is sufficient or not - in which case shuffling around will only manage the shortfall. But it all depends on what the applications do on the VM's. Plan each VM as you would plan a pyhscial server (Ram, cou requirement etc.).