hi,
For a Virtual Machine, Consumed Memory is the physical memory 'touched' by the VM.
>>>> a correction in the above statement. The above description is for the Active memory.
Active Memory – “Amount of memory that is actively used, as estimated by VMkernel based on recently touched memory pages.”
Consumed memory and Active memory have different definitions at VM and Host level.
The best resource would be the following article from VMware. It clearly explain and define each counters at VM and Host level.
Memory Counters
Does the consumed memory go down? this counter should always increase, is that correct? will the VM ever release its consumed memory?
>>> As mentioned in the above article at host level "consumed memory = total host memory - free host memory ". So whatever happens at the host level which will increase the free memory will increase consumed memory. For example, Power off a VM, VMotion a VM out of the host, uninstall some agents at host level which consume host memory, etc.