Resource Manager
Resource Manager is a critical component for managing a scalable data center service that uses Microsoft® Provisioning Framework (MPF). Without effective management of resources in the data center, system resources are likely to be over- or underutilized. Overutilization can lower quality of service and violate a subscriber's service level agreement. Conversely, underutilization can inflate operating costs.
Resource Manager establishes an optimal utilization model that generates a notification whenever resources are over- or under-allocated to resource consumers. You can use Resource Manager to:
- Allocate consumers a percentage of total capacity available on resources such as servers.
- Allocate based on either virtual used or actual used capacity. Virtual used capacity is the maximum amount that a consumer is entitled to have, such as an amount that would be guaranteed in a service-level agreement. Actual used capacity is a forecast of average actual consumption, perhaps derived from consumption statistics collected over time. For example, in a Microsoft® Exchange installation, each consumer might be entitled to 30 MB of disk space but in actuality, the average user might consume only 15 MB.
- Allocate based on the rank of a resource. For example, suppose you have a group of servers available for particular consumers. You could rank the individual servers and allocate consumers to the highest-ranked servers first.
- Manage consumers and resources as groups (for operations), as types (to simplify data entry and maintenance), and as instances (when dealing with individuals).
- Establish mappings between consumers and resources to simplify selection of groups and instances for allocations, queries, and other operations. Consumers and resources eligible for consideration are selected for candidate sets.
- Update allocations and shift consumers between resources as demands and equipment availability change over time.
Resource Manager supports one allocation model, the block model, in which each resource instance has a maximum capacity, and each consumer instance is allocated a given percentage of that capacity. During allocation, the block-model algorithm evaluates each consumer and attempts to allocate it to the highest-ranked resource instance. If that resource is already fully allocated, the allocation function tries the next highest-ranked resource instance, and so on, for all resource instances and all consumers. Whenever multiple resources share the same rank, consumers are allocated to the first resource with sufficient capacity.
See Also
Architecture, BlockModelRMO Provider, CoreRMO Provider, Resource Manager Architecture, Resource Manager Concepts, Resource Manager Procedure Matrix
Top of Page
© 1999-2002 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.