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Jonathan Marrott's VM Scripting Blog

A swell blog containing some of the scripts I have written for VM management.

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The service console memory should be increased if you are running apps other than the default install. This includes management agents, backups, etc. Here is a simple command that I ran across to accomplish this. It requires a reboot to take effect. I incorporate this in my kickstart script. Don't forget to set your swap partition to be 2x the Service Console memory.

See Current Setting:
The setting shown is in bytes (MB * 1024 * 1024)
vimsh -n -e "/hostsvc/memoryinfo"
serviceConsoleReserved - Current setting
serviceConsoleReservedCfg - Setting after next reboot

Set to 800MB with vimsh:
vimsh -n -e "/hostsvc/memoryinfo 838860800"

Set by manual edit of files:
mv -f /etc/vmware/esx.conf /tmp/esx.conf.bak
sed -e 's/boot\/memSize = \"272\"/boot\/memSize = \"512\"/g' /tmp/esx.conf.bak >> /etc/vmware/esx.conf

mv -f /boot/grub/grub.conf /tmp/grub.conf.bak
sed -e 's/uppermem 277504/uppermem 523264/g' -e 's/mem=272M/mem=512M/g' /tmp/grub.conf.bak >> /boot/grub/grub.conf

If you feel like setting it to the maximum of 800 MB.

mv -f /etc/vmware/esx.conf /tmp/esx.conf.bak
sed -e 's/boot\/memSize = \"272\"/boot\/memSize = \"800\"/g' /tmp/esx.conf.bak >> /etc/vmware/esx.conf

mv -f /boot/grub/grub.conf /tmp/grub.conf.bak
sed -e 's/uppermem 277504/uppermem 818176/g' -e 's/mem=272M/mem=800M/g' /tmp/grub.conf.bak >> /boot/grub/grub.conf

Tags: vimsh, esx, script, memory


Oct 9, 2007 12:39 PM j.d.vmware

Where is anything on the service console memory documented? I've been looking through all the docs and can't find anyting. Is the max suggested 512?

Oct 9, 2007 1:14 PM froboy in response to: j.d.vmware

The max is 800 MB. (Odd number I thought it would have been 1024 or something.) For the amount of scripts and apps that we were running VMWare suggested that we at minimum increased our SC memory to 512. If we were still having performance issues to increase it to 800. 512 did the trick.

Oct 9, 2007 1:18 PM j.d.vmware in response to: froboy

Thanks, your reply is much appreciated. Can you point me in the direction of where this is documented?

Oct 9, 2007 1:27 PM froboy in response to: j.d.vmware

Configuration Maximums for VMware Infrastructure 3:

Table 4. Memory Maximums Maximum
Size of RAM per server 64GB
RAM allocated to service console 800MB

Installation and Upgrade Guide:
Enhanced Performance Recommendations
The lists in previous sections suggest a basic ESX Server configuration. In practice, you can use multiple physical disks, which can be SCSI disks, Fibre Channel LUNs, or RAID LUNs.
Here are some recommendations for enhanced performance:
• RAM – Having sufficient RAM for all your virtual machines is important to achieving good performance. ESX Server hosts require more RAM than typical servers. An ESX Server host must be equipped with sufficient RAM to run concurrent virtual machines, plus run the service console.

For example, operating four virtual machines with Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Windows XP requires your ESX Server host be equipped with over a gigabyte of RAM for baseline performance:
• 1024MB for the virtual machines (256MB minimum per operating system as recommended by vendors × 4)

• 272MB for the ESX Server service console

Running these example virtual machines with a more reasonable 512MB RAM requires the ESX Server host to be equipped with at least 2.2GB RAM.
• 2048MB for the virtual machines (512MB × 4)

• 272MB for the ESX Server service console

These calculations do not take into account variable overhead memory for each virtual machine. For more information, see the Resource Management Guide.

Note
The ESX Server host might require more RAM for the service console if you are running third-party management applications or backup agents.

froboy
Click to view froboy's profile Member since: Jun 26, 2006

A swell blog containing some of the scripts I have written for VM management.

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