1. A computer implemented method for characterizing a hardware resource in a virtual data processing environment, the method comprising: creating a test virtual machine (VM) in a host system, the test virtual machine (VM) for performing the characterizing of the hardware resource; allocating the hardware resource to the test virtual machine (VM) in the host system, wherein the hardware resource is temporarily assigned from a production VM in the host system to the test VM in the host system, wherein the hardware resource was selected in the production VM under a first operating circumstance and the allocating being responsive to a change in the first operating circumstance to a second operating circumstance; configuring a characterization workload to execute in the test VM to characterize a parameter of the hardware resource; causing the characterization workload to execute on the test VM; receiving a first result of the characterization workload execution from the test VM, wherein the result assigns a value to a characteristic of the hardware resource indicative of a behavior of the hardware resource under the second operating circumstance; and configuring, responsive to the value of the characteristic of the hardware resource being below a threshold associated with the second operating circumstance, the production VM with a second hardware resource in place of the hardware resource.