Memory Balooning on a non overprovisioned Host

[schmidtl]

Hey,  

I have the following effect, on VMware ESXi, 6.7.0, 16713306, that I have VM's with significant Ammounts of Balooning, on an host that has no memory overcomitted. The Host has 1TB RAM, th VM's on that Host have a Total of 148GB Ram Configured. (See esxTop Output).

Any Ideas why there is Balooning? (One of the VM's is even the VCSA itself). Side Note: it's an AMD based System.

[vbondzio · Accepted solution]

Most likely a VM or RP limit. Can you connect via SSH and run the following 3 commands and post the output here? (mono spaced / e.g. Courier New)

memstats -r vm-stats -s name:b:memSize:max:consumed:ballooned:balloonTgt:swapTgt:swapped:active:touched:zipped:zipSaved:shared:zero:sharedSaved -u mb 2> /dev/null | sed -n '/  \+name/,/ \+Total/p'

memstats -r comp-stats -s total:minFree:free:numHigh:numClear:numSoft:numHard:numLow:memState -u mb 2> /dev/null | sed -n '/^-\+/,/.*/p'

memstats -r group-stats -g0 -l2 -s gid:name:parGid:nChild:min:max:conResv:availResv:memSize -u mb 2> /dev/null | sed -n '/^-\+/,/.*\n/p'

[vbondzio · Accepted solution]

Most likely a VM or RP limit. Can you connect via SSH and run the following 3 commands and post the output here? (mono spaced / e.g. Courier New)

memstats -r vm-stats -s name:b:memSize:max:consumed:ballooned:balloonTgt:swapTgt:swapped:active:touched:zipped:zipSaved:shared:zero:sharedSaved -u mb 2> /dev/null | sed -n '/  \+name/,/ \+Total/p'

memstats -r comp-stats -s total:minFree:free:numHigh:numClear:numSoft:numHard:numLow:memState -u mb 2> /dev/null | sed -n '/^-\+/,/.*/p'

memstats -r group-stats -g0 -l2 -s gid:name:parGid:nChild:min:max:conResv:availResv:memSize -u mb 2> /dev/null | sed -n '/^-\+/,/.*\n/p'

[ifsdd]

.

[schmidtl]

You nailed it, there has been indeed a Ressource Pool with Limits, containing a lot of VM's. One knows, memory Limits are bad. One teaches, memory Limits are bad. One has heared you several times talking about what the Problems are. But one does not spot them if they hit him in real life ;( ..shame on me.