Focusing on the problem of Virtual Machine Placement (VMP) in heterogeneous cloud environment, a Resource Demand Distribution Feature based Placement Algorithm (RDDFPA) for virtual machines was proposed. Firstly, a method of describing virtual machine requirements and physical machine configuration based on scale factor of CPU resource and memory resource was established. Based on the scale factor, all the virtual machines were sorted. Secondly, by analyzing the proportion relationship of virtual machine requirements and physical machine configuration in the CPU resources and memory resources, the proportion demarcation point was determined, and the partition of virtual machine set was completed. The requirement proportion of matched physical machines with different configurations was reflected by the size of each virtual machine subset.Finally, by using the heuristic algorithm such as the First Fit algorithm, the virtual machine subset was placed on the subset of physical machines with matched configuration. Theoretical analysis and simulation experimental results show that, compared with the total number of physical machines with any single configuration, the total number of physical machines required by the proposed algorithm is reduced by 2%-17%.The proposed RDDFPA can determine the number of physical machines with various configurations according to the distribution of virtual machine resource requirements, and efficiently complete the placement of virtual machines, which can improve the resource utilization rate and reduce the system energy consumption.