How to quickly configure the resource pools in VMware

If you want a quick and easy way to design resource pools in VMware you could do the following.

You could create 3 by the name of:

Gold > Silver > Bronze

The shares are determined by the number of VMs in the resource pool.  Shares are an arbitrary value, but in this case they are used to determine the value toward each other.

I gave Gold 100  Silver 50  Bronze 25.  This means that gold would be the most important, silver is half as important as gold, and finally bronze is half as important as silver.

Resource pools only take effect in times of contention for resources.  So in our case gold will get the most resources if that were to happen.

To calculate the shares to give a pool, take the number of VMs and multiple it by our share number above.

So to calculate how many total shares the gold pool should have, take 100 X (number of vms in the gold pool)

Take 50 X (number of vms in the silver pool)

Take 25 X (number of VMs in the bronze pool)

Here are two scripts you can schedule to take care of this in your cluster.

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2010/02/24/custom-shares-on-a-resource-pools-scripted/

http://wahlnetwork.com/2012/02/01/understanding-resource-pools-in-vmware-vsphere/