An administrator is troubleshooting resource availability within the cluster.

Prism Central classifies a virtual machine as a Dead VM after it has remained powered off for at least 30 days. The VM Efficiency capability uses this duration to distinguish temporarily stopped workloads from VMs that are sufficiently inactive to justify administrative review. Consequently, a VM powered off for only 5 or 15 days does not meet the classification threshold, while 45 days exceeds—but does not define—the required minimum.

A Dead VM is not automatically deleted. The classification is an efficiency finding intended to identify resources that may no longer be required. Even while powered off, the VM can continue consuming storage through its virtual disks, snapshots, recovery points, and associated configuration objects. Administrators should therefore validate application ownership, retention requirements, protection policies, and compliance obligations before deleting or archiving it.

The VM Efficiency widget is part of Prism’s broader behavioral and capacity-optimization functionality. Other inefficiency classifications can identify overprovisioned or constrained VMs by evaluating historical resource behavior. The 30-day rule is specifically associated with the powered-off Dead VM condition and should not be confused with utilization-based efficiency findings.

NHCF/NCA reference: Prism Central monitoring, VM efficiency, resource optimization, and behavioral analysis. Official reference: Behavioral Learning Tools and VM Efficiency , specifically the Dead VM classification.

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