Hardware resources in a virtualized environment are managed. Via at least one processor external to a physical host that hosts a plurality of virtual machines, resource statistics are received pertaining to hardware resources of the physical host that are allocated to each of the plurality of virtual machines. External to the physical host and in real time, the resource statistics are analyzed to determine whether allocation of the hardware resources to each of the plurality of virtual machines is optimized. When the allocation of the hardware resources to at least one of the virtual machines is not optimized, in real time, at least one resource allocation message is communicated to the physical host, the resource allocation message indicating at least one hardware resource that is to be allocated to, or de-allocated from, the at least one virtual machine.