Based on cluster resource utilization, a DRS-enabled cluster can reduce its power consumption by powering on or off ESXi hosts through the vSphere Distributed Power Management (DPM) feature.
Memory and CPU resources demanded by VMs in the cluster are compared with the total resource capacity that's available from the hosts in the cluster. If the cluster is providing excessive resources, one or more hosts are placed in standby mode by DPM and powered off after migrating the VM to other hosts. When the capacity that's provided is deemed not sufficient, DRS powers the host on, bringing them out of standby mode and vMotions the VMs to them.
vSphere DPM can use three protocols to bring a host out of standby mode:
- Intelligent ...
