I think someone disabled ballooning at the host level...

[richard612]

I have a pair of 5.1 hosts under considerable memory pressure.  They are compressing and swapping but not ballooning.  I suspect some Wise Guy disabled ballooning at the host level.  Which advanced setting controls this?

thx!

[LucianoPatrão]

Hi,

If I remember is disable/enabled at VM level and not Host level. IT uses VM guest OS because VMware tools is included in the balloon driver.

[LNCHAARY]

HI,

Ballooning is something done through drivers in VMware tools at virtual machine level. First check if the affected VMs has VMware tools installed, as ballooning cannot work without it.

- If you feel someone has intentionally done it, then refer below KB to check for places to see if the ballooning is disabled or not.

VMware KB: Disabling the balloon driver

Thanks,

Chaary

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[Yogesh_Darwade]

To enable the balloon driver in a virtual machine:

1. Using the vSphere Client, connect to the vCenter Server or the ESXi/ESX host where the virtual machine resides.
2. Shut down the virtual machine if it is powered on.
3. SSH to the ESXi/ESX host. For more information, see Connecting to an ESX host using an SSH client (1019852).
4. Change directory to the datastore where the virtual machine's configuration file resides.
5. Back up the virtual machine's configuration file.
6. Edit the virtual machine's configuration file (virtual_machine_name.vmx) and remove this entry:
   
   sched.mem.maxmemctl = "0"
   
   
7. Save and close the file.
8. Power on the virtual machine.

OR

To enable the Balloon driver of the particular virtual machine.Browse towards the virtual Machine Configuration file that .VMX file and remove the below entry

sched.mem.maxmemctl = “0”

Save and Exit from editing. The memory balloon driver is enabled. (See the attachement)