> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.xloud.tech/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Optimization Goals

> Understand Xloud Optimization goals — server consolidation, thermal optimization, workload stabilization, energy savings, and noisy neighbor mitigation.

## Overview

An optimization goal defines the objective of an audit. When you create an audit, you
select a goal and the Optimization automatically chooses the most appropriate
strategy algorithm to achieve it. Goals translate high-level operational intent — "reduce
my host footprint" or "fix noisy-neighbor complaints" — into concrete migration plans.

<Note>
  **Prerequisites**

  * Optimization enabled on your platform
  * Project access with the `member` role or above
  * Metrics collected for the look-back period (typically 1 hour minimum)
</Note>

***

## Available Goals

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Server Consolidation" icon="layers" color="#197560">
    Migrate workloads from underutilized hosts to consolidate the active footprint.
    Idle hosts can enter low-power states after workloads are moved off.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Thermal Optimization" icon="thermometer" color="#197560">
    Redistribute workloads away from compute racks with high inlet temperatures,
    protecting hardware and extending operational lifespan.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Workload Stabilization" icon="activity" color="#197560">
    Identify instances with erratic CPU or memory consumption and migrate them to
    hosts where they achieve consistent, stable performance.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Energy Savings" icon="zap" color="#197560">
    Consolidate workloads to the minimum number of hosts during off-peak periods,
    enabling idle nodes to reduce power draw.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Zone Rebalancing" icon="network" color="#197560">
    Evenly redistribute workloads across availability zones after recovery events
    or uneven initial placement.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Noisy Neighbor Mitigation" icon="volume-x" color="#197560">
    Detect instances causing CPU or memory contention and isolate them from
    co-located workloads to restore performance for affected instances.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

***

## Goal Reference

| Goal                   | CLI Name                 | Strategy                       | Data Required            | Trigger Scenario                          |
| ---------------------- | ------------------------ | ------------------------------ | ------------------------ | ----------------------------------------- |
| Server Consolidation   | `server_consolidation`   | Bin-packing                    | Compute API              | High host count, low average utilization  |
| Thermal Optimization   | `thermal_optimization`   | Outlet temperature heatmap     | Prometheus (temperature) | High temperature alerts from monitoring   |
| Workload Stabilization | `workload_stabilization` | Statistical variance analysis  | Telemetry time-series    | Sporadic guest performance complaints     |
| Energy Savings         | `saving_energy`          | Consolidate + mark idle hosts  | Compute API              | Off-peak scheduled run                    |
| Zone Rebalancing       | `zone_migration`         | Even zone distribution         | Compute API              | Post-recovery or uneven initial placement |
| Noisy Neighbor         | `noisy_neighbor`         | CPU steal contention detection | Telemetry per-instance   | Guest CPU steal complaints                |

***

## Selecting a Goal

Choose the goal that matches the problem you are solving:

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="My cluster has too many active hosts" icon="layers" defaultOpen>
    Use **Server Consolidation** (`server_consolidation`). The strategy identifies hosts
    running below the utilization threshold (default: 20%) and generates migrations that
    pack those workloads onto fewer hosts.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Some instances are performing erratically" icon="activity">
    Use **Workload Stabilization** (`workload_stabilization`). The strategy analyzes
    per-instance CPU and memory time-series data to identify high-variance instances
    and moves them to less-contended hosts.

    Requires Telemetry metrics to be collected for the look-back period (minimum 2 hours
    of data recommended).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="A compute rack is running hot" icon="thermometer">
    Use **Thermal Optimization** (`thermal_optimization`). The strategy reads inlet
    temperature data from Prometheus and generates a plan to move workloads away from
    the hottest racks.

    Requires Prometheus with temperature sensor metrics configured as a data source.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="After a failover, zones are imbalanced" icon="network">
    Use **Zone Rebalancing** (`zone_migration`). The strategy redistributes instances
    evenly across availability zones without requiring external metric data.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Guests are complaining about noisy neighbors" icon="volume-x">
    Use **Noisy Neighbor** (`noisy_neighbor`). The strategy detects instance pairs with
    high CPU contention co-located on the same host and separates them.

    Requires per-instance CPU steal metrics from Telemetry.
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

***

## Goal Availability

Not all goals may be available on your deployment. Available goals depend on the data
sources and strategies enabled by your administrator.

```bash title="List available goals" theme={null}
watcher goal list
```

If a goal is not listed, contact your administrator to enable the required data source. Your administrator can configure this through [XDeploy](/deployment).

***

## Next Steps

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Run an Audit" href="/services/optimization/user-guide/run-audit" color="#197560">
    Create and run an audit using one of the available optimization goals.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Action Plans" href="/services/optimization/user-guide/action-plans" color="#197560">
    Review the migration plan generated by a completed audit.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Audit History" href="/services/optimization/user-guide/audit-history" color="#197560">
    Review past audits and track optimization trends over time.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Optimization Admin Guide" href="/services/optimization/admin-guide" color="#197560">
    Administrator reference for configuring strategies and data sources.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>