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Introduction to basic tasks

Workload Balancing is a powerful Citrix Hypervisor component that includes many features designed to optimize the workloads in your environment. These features include:

  • Host power management
  • The ability to schedule optimization-mode changes
  • Running reports

In addition, you can fine-tune the criteria Workload Balancing uses to make optimization recommendations.

However, when you first begin using Workload Balancing, there are two main tasks you probably use Workload Balancing for on a daily (or regular) basis:

  • Determining the best host on which to start a virtual machine
  • Accepting Workload Balancing optimization recommendations

For information about obtaining and configuring the Workload Balancing virtual appliance, see the Workload Balancing Quick Start.

Determining the best host on which to start a VM

For more information, see Choosing an Optimal Server for VM Initial Placement, Migrate, and Resume.

Workload Balancing can provide recommendations about the host. Determining the host to start a VM on is useful when you want to restart a powered off VM and when you want to migrate a VM to another host. It might also be useful in Citrix Virtual Desktops environments.

Accepting Workload Balancing recommendations

For more information, see Accepting Optimization Recommendations.

After Workload Balancing is running for a while, it begins to make recommendations about ways in which you can improve your environment. For example, if your goal is to improve VM density on hosts, with the appropriate settings, Workload Balancing issues a recommendation to consolidate VMs on a host. Assuming you are not running in automated mode, you can choose to either apply this recommendation or simply ignore it.

Both of these tasks, and how you perform them in XenCenter, are explained in more depth in the sections that follow. Another frequently used task is running reports about the workloads in your environment, which is described in Generating and Managing Workload Balancing Reports.

Important:

After Workload Balancing is running for some time, if you don’t receive optimal placement recommendations, evaluate your performance thresholds as described in the Workload Balancing documentation. It is critical to set Workload Balancing to the correct thresholds for your environment or its recommendations might not be appropriate or occur at the correct times.

Introduction to basic tasks

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