Managing Virtual Machine Memory

VMware ESX Server 2.0

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You can manage virtual machine memory from the VMware Management Interface or from the service console.

Managing Memory Resources from the Management Interface

You may also view and change settings from the virtual machine details pages in the VMware Management Interface.

On the server's Status Monitor page, click the name of an individual virtual machine. The details page for that virtual machine appears.
Click the Memory tab.
Click Edit. The Memory Resource Settings page appears.
Enter the desired settings, then click OK.

You must log in as root in order to change resource management settings using either the management interface or procfs.

Managing Memory Resources from the Service Console

You can also manage memory resources by editing the following settings in the virtual machine's configuration file. To edit the configuration file, use the configuration file editor in the management interface. See Editing a Virtual Machine's Configuration File Directly for details.

memsize = <size>This configuration file option specifies the maximum virtual machine size to be <size>MB.

sched.mem.minsize = <size>This configuration file option specifies the guaranteed minimum virtual machine size to be <size>MB. The maximum valid value for <size> is 100 percent of the specified maximum virtual machine size. The minimum valid value for <size> depends on the amount of available swap space. The default minimum size is 50 percent of the specified maximum virtual machine size.

sched.mem.shares = <n>This configuration file option specifies the initial memory share allocation for a virtual machine to be <n> shares. The valid range of numerical values for <n> is 0 to 100000. You may also use the special values low, normal and high. These values are automatically converted into numbers, through the configuration options MemSharesPerMBLow, MemSharesPerMBNormal and MemSharesPerMBHigh, described in the next section. If the number of shares for a virtual machine is not specified, the assigned allocation is normal, with a default value equal to 10 times the virtual machine's maximum memory, in MB.

For example, if you created a virtual machine with a maximum memory of 256MB, and with its shares settings as normal, then this virtual machine has 10 times 256, or 2560 shares. Similarly, a virtual machine with a maximum memory of 1GB with a normal share setting, has 10240 shares.

sched.mem.maxmemctl = <size>This configuration file option specifies the maximum amount of memory that may be reclaimed from the virtual machine using vmmemctl to be <size>MB. If additional memory needs to be reclaimed, the system swaps instead of using vmmemctl. The default maximum size is half of the specified maximum virtual machine size.

sched.mem.affinity = <NUMA_node>This configuration file option specifies that, if possible, all of the virtual machine's memory should be allocated on the specified NUMA node. For more information, see Associating Future Virtual Machine Memory Allocations with a NUMA Node.

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