Recently I have been receiving similar questions on the difference between the vSphere client and the new web client when it comes to displaying the memory utilization of a DRS cluster.
The displayed metric of the Resource Distribution Chart in the old trusty vSphere client shows Consumed memory of a virtual machine.
When hovering above the bar that represents a virtual machine, the callout shows Consumed, Active and the DRS entitled Resources Delivered. All are very interesting statistics and they do come in handy when troubleshooting or reviewing the environment, but DRS does not base its load-balancing decisions based on consumed memory.
DRS uses the active memory usage as primary metric to determine the current host load and whether or not the DRS cluster is in need of load balancing. To reflect the metrics DRS takes into account when load-balancing, we decided to have the cluster memory utilization chart display Active memory as primary displayed metric.
By hovering over the blue bar, the Consumed memory, DRS entitlement and Entitled Resources Delivered are displayed.
Notice that the Cluster summary in the web client does not provide a DRS Resource Distribution chart anymore. You can find the CPU and Memory utilization of a Cluster, by selecting the Hosts and Clusters option in the Home screen. Select the menu bar option Monitor, select vSphere DRS and finally Memory Utilization.
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