vSphere 6.5 DRS is now Network-Aware. Based on network utilization, when will DRS balance VMs?

When a network resource pool is configured under NIOC (Network I/O Control) on a distributed switch, DRS gains visibility into per-host network saturation metrics. This data allows DRS to factor network utilization into its initial placement and ongoing balancing decisions, preventing VMs from landing on hosts with saturated network links. Without a configured network resource pool, DRS has no mechanism to collect or act on network utilization information.

Simply enabling NIOC is not sufficient on its own - DRS requires network resource pools to be explicitly configured under NIOC to collect the per-host network utilization metrics needed for network-aware balancing.

Network-Aware DRS factors network utilization into both initial placement and ongoing load balancing decisions, not exclusively during initial VM boot.

DRS does not trigger vMotion migrations based solely on a network utilization threshold being exceeded; network saturation is one input into the overall DRS scoring algorithm alongside CPU and memory metrics.