What does storage DRS do?

Storage DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduler) is a feature in VMware vSphere designed to enhance storage resource management specifically for virtual machines (VMs). Its primary function revolves around balancing datastore utilization and efficiently managing the placement of VMs across available datastores.

By continuously monitoring the performance and capacity of datastores, Storage DRS ensures that workloads are distributed evenly, preventing any single datastore from becoming a bottleneck. This proactive management allows for improved performance and availability of applications running on the VMs. When a VM is powered on or migrated, Storage DRS can recommend or automatically move the VM to a more suitable datastore based on predefined criteria, such as space or performance metrics, leading to a consistently optimized storage environment for the overall infrastructure.

This improves operational efficiency by allowing administrators to focus more on higher-level tasks rather than constantly monitoring storage loads and manually adjusting VM placements. In this way, Storage DRS directly enhances the effectiveness of storage resource management within a VMware environment, aligning with best practices for workload balance and performance optimization.