Abstract: Methods and systems for improved management of power utilization and resource consumption among physical hosts in a cloud computing environment. The management server may provide functionality facilitating the identification and optimized placement of a virtual machine within a cloud computing environment by evaluating historical and heuristic metrics data associated with both the physical hosts and the virtual machines. The management server utilizes the metrics data to generate scores for a plurality of physical host based on physical resources available in a cloud of computing resources. The management server identifies a physical host on which to place a virtual machine using the metrics data, generated scores, and numerous, configurable criteria. The management server responds to the identification of the physical host on which to place a virtual machine by adjusting processor performance and/or operating states for one or more of the physical hosts in the cloud computing environment.