Frequent creation of VMs leads to VM proliferation. Over time, many VMs turn stale and continue to consume virtual resources. Increase storage capacity by deleting VMs that are not powered on for a long time. These VMs tend to consume storage space without actively using CPU and memory. Further, you need to investigate VMs that are idle and have high co-stop percentages for resource contention and performance issues. You can reclaim disk space by deleting VMs with high snapshot disk usage. Also, you can check VM sprawl by reclaiming the wasted resources.
Right-sizing VMs is a necessary action to control VM sprawl. It also makes it easier to maintain optimal CPU and memory configurations. You can right-size VMs that are under- or over-allocated with resources (vCPU, memory) to improve performance. Using a virtualization monitoring tool, you can perform sprawl management tasks such as add/remove CPU, add/remove RAM, and delete VMs, without logging into vCenter.
Orphaned VMDK files are virtual hard disks, which remain in the virtual infrastructure even after the associated VMs have been deleted. These orphaned VMDK files consume usable disk space, which will lead to resource contention issues. Using a virtualization management tool, you can identify and delete these files instantly to free up the usable disk space, without logging in to vCenter.
"SolarWinds Virtualization Manager's ability to recover wasted resources makes it stand out. Its VM Sprawl Control feature is the best tool among the compared products that tracks down abandoned and over-allocated VMs to reclaim wasted resources."
Brien Posey
Microsoft MVP
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Virtualization Manager
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VMAN, an Orion module, is built on the SolarWinds Platform