VM Resource and Availability Service Fling

VMware recently introduced  a new VM Resource and Availability Service fling, which helps you to identify the available resources in case of one or more ESXi hosts fail. The output will show how many VMs will be safely restarted, how many of them will be experiencing performance issue and how many will fail to start.

For those who haven’t heard about VMware fling there is small introduction here.

VMware fling falls under VMware Labs and it is a piece of software which is not officially supported by VMware. It’s usually produced by developers as a new or additional feature. Some of the Flings will become officially supported and can be found as build-in in a vCenter server. For a full Fling repository follow this link.

VM Resource and Availability Service Fling is offered as SaaS, means you will just download the DRS dump from your vCenter server and upload it to this website.

DRS dump can be found here:

• vCenter Server 5.x and earlier versions on Windows XP, 2000, 2003: %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Application Data\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\Logs\drmdump\
• vCenter Server 5.x and earlier versions on Windows Vista, 7, 2008: C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\Logs\drmdumb\
• vCenter Server Appliance 5.x: /var/log/vmware/vpx/drmdump/

Once you accept the End User License Agreement Terms just drag and drop the DRS dump to the designated window. It will take several seconds depending on the cluster size to process the data. Once finished, you will get the overview of your cluster:

Below you can specify whether you want to simulate failure of one host with the most negative impact or selecting specific hosts. Let’s go with the second option and choose more hosts to see the predicted impact:

You can also explore the details clicking on the the icon with a number of failing or resource reduction VMs:

I encourage you to try it, simulation is really very easy and for free. Within few minutes you get estimation on how the ESXi host failure will impact your VMware environment.

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Jan Hosek

Jan Hosek is a Virtualization Engineer focusing on the VMware and IBM cloud portfolio. He started with the virtualization in 2009 and since that time gained experience in several T&T projects as IT Administrator, Technical Lead and IT Architect. Jan holds several certifications from VMware (vExpert 2015, VCAP5-DCD, VCAP5-DCA), Microsoft and IBM.

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