Abstract: One or more services for enhancing guest utilization of a virtual machine and other VDC resources may be provided at the intermediary manager. In an embodiment, the intermediary manager intercepts a hypercall from a guest operating system that is separate from the intermediary manager. The intermediary manager determines that a particular intermediary service is associated with the hypercall and causes execution of service instructions associated with the particular intermediary service. The intermediary manager and guest operating systems may operate within a virtual machine hosted by a host machine and managed by a hypervisor. Embodiments may be useful in any of a virtualized enterprise computer system; a virtual machine infrastructure in a private data center; computing, storage or networking resources in a private cloud; computing, storage or networking resources of cloud service provider; and a hybrid cloud computing environment.

Abstract: Performance information for storage units located at a virtual data center is determined by executing storage administrator logic whose execution is controlled by a management entity different than the virtual data center provider. Performance expectations are automatically determined based on the determined performance information. In response to determining that a particular storage unit is incompatible with performance expectations applicable to the particular storage unit, embodiments cause a reduction in utilization of the particular storage unit. Based on determined performance information, another embodiment determines that a performance pattern indicating a physical co-location of a first storage unit and a second storage unit has occurred.