Memory Problem

[rockie86]

Hello,

I'm using Workstation Player 15.0.2 on a Win7 SP1 PC.

Host PC has 24 GB Ram.

I created a guest and reserved 16 GB memory for it. (Guest is also Win7 SP1)

When i open an application on guest, memory increases to its required value to work. (It's 3 - 5 GB physical Ram usage i see on the task manager)

The problem is, it wont decrease if i close all running applications on the guest. (Host is not running any other applications from start to end.)

I see 3 GB memory usage on guest, when the host uses 16 GB for VmWare. It decrease only when i stop vmware.

I didnt understand why memory is not adjusting itself?

Thanks for your help.

[wila]

Hi,

That's exactly how it is designed to work. When you close an application, the guest keeps the memory it used for that application reserved in a cache so that if you decide to re-open that application that it can re-open it without having to read from disk. You are not using that memory, so it ends up as cache. A perfectly normal thing to do with memory you are not using.

Memory is only reclaimed when there's a memory shortage at the host.

If you want the guest to use less memory then change the configuration to use less memory (eg. not 16GB, but less)

--

Wil

[rockie86]

Hi again. Thanks for the reply.

The problem is, if i decrease the reserved memory for guest, application freeze sometimes. Sometimes i had to restart guest.

My application uses 3-5GB ram when its idle. But if i run simulation, it increases up to 16GB. (Application is siemens tia portal)

In my opinion, it should release the unused memory when the application does not request so much. like host operating system.

Another point is, the application dont use really 16GB memory as you see from screen captures.

While i see 3GB memory usage(even i did not run simulation before.) on guest task manager, i see 16GB memory usage on host task manager. I dont understand this.

Thans for your help.

[wila]

Hi,

Yes, correct.

The reason for that is because your windows guest initializes the full 16GB at start as part of the boot process.

The only thing you could possibly do is to try and create memory pressure at the host, this would then cause the VMware memory balloon driver to come into action.

However if you do that then things might get slow as a part of that 16GB has to be written out to disk.

--

Wil

[rockie86]

Ok.

I think there is no way to reduce the guest memory if it increases once.

Thank you.