Do you normally leave the SC memory at default?

[rickardnobel]

On an ESX host the Service Console seems to get 300 MB as default, my question is if that normally is enough? Or do you change this to make it run better or to have some room for future agents?

That is, even if not planning to run any 3rd party stuff inside the SC, would it be good to give it more memory? Or is it best left at default?

[vmroyale]

Hello.

I tend to always make swap 1600 on setup and then go ahead and give the SC 800. My reasoning is you never know what requirement may come up later and the SC will already be set up. If you aren't using any agents or other 3rd party apps, then you can leave the memory at 300 and monitor it. Of course, giving it an additional 500 MB on a system with 256 GB RAM is sort of a non-issue. Depends on how much RAM is in the host too though.

Good Luck!

[AntonVZhbankov]

I leave it by default, but I have hosts with plenty of RAM, so I'm not even close to ballooning.

---

MCSA, MCTS Hyper-V, VCP 3/4, VMware vExpert

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[rickardnobel]

Thanks for your reply. Setting the swap to 1600 during installation must be very good, since the swap size seems to be very hard to change after. (Is it possible?)

The memory you allocate to the SC, is that reserved for it even if not used?

[rickardnobel]

I leave it by default, but I have hosts with plenty of RAM, so I'm not even close to ballooning.

I am afraid I am not really following you here?

[a_p_]

The following KB article about SC memory may be worth reading http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003501

André

[rickardnobel]

The following KB article about SC memory may be worth reading http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003501

Thanks, I think I read that article some time in the past, but it is interesting.

I am mostly interested in if there is any "from the field best practise" as e.g. always set the SC memory to 800 to avoid ever having to reboot the ESX? Or if it almost always is enough with the 300 MB default?

The article did also mention to raise the SC memory when:

"When the ESX host is part of a VMware High Availability (HA) cluster"

Is that valid for ESX 4 hosts or some older recommendation?

[a_p_]

I usually create the swap partition with the maximum size of 1,600 MB (just in case) and leave the SC memory at default.

"When the ESX host is part of a VMware High Availability (HA) cluster"

The reason this is mentioned is because when you add the host to a vCenter/cluster configuration, the HA agent is installed on the hosts and also consumes some memory. However I never had any issues with the default setting.

BTW: The reason for the 1,600MB of the swap partition is based on default Linux configurations, where the swap size has to be twice the size of the memory.

André

[RParker]

tend to always make swap 1600 on setup and then go ahead and give the SC 800

Overkill, overkill. The ONLY reason to give SC 800 meg is IF you are running SC agents. If you don't run any 3rd party utilities, you don't need it. The ESX console is going away with the next release of ESX anyway, so these agents should be run remotely. Many new 3rd party tools are able to get what they need from vCenter and don't need to run on every ESX host anyway. Even if you don't have vCenter, you still don't need to run these tools in SC, they can be run external.

On top of that SC shouldn't EVER swap. 1600 on a 300GB or 600GB ESX host is nothing, but you won't use it, so why allocate it?

It's not a good principle to run things inside of SC anyway, some people want to run FTP or other things, it's not a good idea. SC is for diagnostics and simple commands, not for running programs.

On an ESX host the Service Console seems to get 300 MB as default, my question is if that normally is enough?

It's plenty, I rarely see SC used even half of that... So since you are not planning SC use, don't change it.

[RParker]

Setting the swap to 1600 during installation must be very good, since the swap size seems to be very hard to change after.

No you can't change the swap later. Also a little misconception about that "swap" it applies to the SC ONLY it's not for the ESX host. ESX uses a different swap method if need, and this isn't part of it.

[rickardnobel]

No you can't change the swap later. Also a little misconception about that "swap" it applies to the SC ONLY it's not for the ESX host. ESX uses a different swap method if need, and this isn't part of it.

Yes I am aware of that and it is natural that you do not want to actually use the SC swap, however it seems like Vmware is saying that if changing SC memory then the swap shall be extended too. If it is impossible then it is harder. But maybe a good reason to set it to 1600 at installation and it will never be too "small".

It's plenty, I rarely see SC used even half of that... So since you are not planning SC use, don't change it.

On my test system I belive it is not much memory left for the SC. If I am reading esxtop correctly that is?

[rickardnobel]

Does anyone have any comment on the esxtop screenshot above? Does this mean that the SC has quite low memory left in this situation?

The same amount of 27 MB free seems also be reported by "free -mt".

Would this mean that there is not room for much else new things on the SC?

At what levels would you recommend increasing the SC memory? (In general, this is just a test host.)

[vmroyale]

What values are shown for "buffers/cache" when you run the "free -mt" command?

[rickardnobel]

What values are shown for "buffers/cache" when you run the "free -mt" command?

Here they are:

(Is it possible to format texts in the forum as "code" to keep tabs and avoid having upload images?)

[vmroyale · Accepted solution]

You have 89 MB in use by applications and 201 MB free, so your memory situation is fine currently. Check out "[free -m command in Linux|http://sheringeorge.co.cc/articles/free--m-command-in-linux]" and/or "[Interpreting Free|http://rimuhosting.com/howto/memory.jsp]" for more information on what all of these values mean and how caching behavior plays into memory values.

[rickardnobel]

You have 89 MB in use by applications and 201 MB free, so your memory situation is fine currently. Check out "[free -m command in Linux|http://sheringeorge.co.cc/articles/free--m-command-in-linux]" and/or "[Interpreting Free|http://rimuhosting.com/howto/memory.jsp]" for more information on what all of these values mean and how caching behavior plays into memory values.

Very nice, thanks.

So the real value to observe should be the "free" value on the "-/+ buffers/cache" line from the free tool only?

And the COSMEM/MB -free value from esxtop is not really interesting, since it (could) include lots of memory used as cache, but could be reclaimed by other processes if needed?

[vmroyale]

So the real value to observe should be the "free" value on the "-/+ buffers/cache" line from the free tool only?

Yes, if you really want to know what is going on then use the "buffers/cache" information.

And the COSMEM/MB -free value from esxtop is not really interesting, since it (could) include lots of memory used as cache, but could be reclaimed by other processes if needed?

If the COSMEM/MB value is not alarmingly low, then it is probably of little interest. If more memory is required by an agent or the SC itself, then the buffers and cache will be freed up and space made available for them.