VMware Cloud Community
nilanjansaha
Contributor
Contributor

Guest not releasing memory ESXi v7.02a

Hello All,

I am facing this problem that the guest servers each allocated with 4 GB of RAM is not releasing the memory to the host even when the actual utilization is about 1 GB or below. VMware tools been installed, Ballooning settings in registry and configuration file of the VM is set correctly, yet the guest VMs are locking on the memory even though no reservation been made. 

Please advise. 

Tags (1)
Reply
0 Kudos
4 Replies
scott28tt
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Is the host under sufficient memory pressure to trigger reclamation through ballooning?

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/com.vmware.vsphere.monitoring.doc/GUID-88CA95AD-A583-4...

 


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Although I am a VMware employee I contribute to VMware Communities voluntarily (ie. not in any official capacity)
VMware Training & Certification blog
Reply
0 Kudos
depping
Leadership
Leadership

As Scott mentions, memory is not released in any shape or form unless there's contention. Meaning that only "ballooning / zipping / swapping" comes into play when you are physically running out of memory.

Reply
0 Kudos
nilanjansaha
Contributor
Contributor

I have 16 GB of RAM in my lab environment, of which approx. 1.2 GB is consumed by the host and running three virtual system with 4 GB each .. that had left me with approx. 2.5 GB of RAM on host about 17%. Now i would create few more VM and check if the ballooning is working and get back. Thank you for your advise  and  .  

Reply
0 Kudos
depping
Leadership
Leadership

Yes, if you add more VMs, and the VMs are memory active, you will starting seeing memory being reclaimed for sure.

Reply
0 Kudos