To ensure optimal usage of the existing enterprise resources, you must be able to monitor the VMs that are idle or powered-off for a long time. SHO identifies the VMs that have been idle or powered-off based on threshold values that you can define. This enables you to identify and reduce the VM sprawl.
The concept of idle VMs is similar to that of oversized VMs. Idle VMs are those that have very low utilization for a prolonged period of time.
SHO identifies the VMs with an average utilization that is always less than the idle threshold for the specified time period as idle. You can define this idle threshold value.
SHO performs the idle VM analysis as follows:
SHO monitors the time periods for which a VM has been powered-off in the total analysis time. If the percentage ratio of the total powered-off time to the total analysis time period is greater than the powered-off threshold value, SHO marks the VM as powered-off. You can define this powered-off threshold value by using the Thresholds configuration feature on the user interface.
The following figure illustrates powered-off VM analysis: