ESXi Host memory requirements for single VM configuration

[RZ112358]

Hello All,

We have a host that runs a single (DB) vm (for a variety of historical/political reasons).  The host has a large amount of memory (512GB).  Since 5.5 ESXi requires a minimum of 4GB of RAM and recommends at least 8GB of memory to take advantage of ESXi features, is there any reason not to allocate 504GB of RAM to the vm?

Thanks for your help!

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

Go for it, but remember that there's a certain overhead for the VM based on vCPUs, and the amount of provisioned memory.

Also keep in mind that unless you reserve the memory, you'll need to have sufficient free disk space on the datastore for the VM's swap file.

André

[RZ112358]

Hello Andre, thank you!  You're reply sent me down the path of trying to figure out the overhead for the vm based on vCPUs, RAM, etc.  I came across this excellent post on the subject from Thomas Franke (translated to English):

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=https://www.sepago.de/blog/2015/02/22/vm-memory...