Memory overcommit - tuning host memory size

[juihaochiang]

Hi, All:

We are using ESXi 5.0 to host VMs (16GB physical memory), and try to reproduce the experiment result of the memory compression as the article "Understanding Memory Resource Management in VMware ESX 4.1".

Inside the article, it reduces the host memory size so that all VMs are gradually overcommitted.

However, we do not want to unplug the memory bank one by one.

Is there a way to set the memory size used by all VMs? or tunning the host memory size?

Thanks,

Jui-Hao

[a_p_]

Maybe one easy option to "reduce" the available memory would be to create a VM or Resource pool with a memory reservation, which leaves only the remaining memory for other VMs!?

André

[juihaochiang]

Thanks, André:

We have thought of that.

But when we open a dummy VM, and set memory reservation for it, it never eats that up until we run a memory intensive program to eat all VM memory.

Also, the VM could still eat CPU resource even it is idle (we can't shut or suspend it, otherwise the memory will be reclaimed back).

You have mentioned about resource pool? could you point out more clearly on that?

Thanks,

Jui-Hao

[juihaochiang]

Yes, I create a resource pool and set the memory limit, and it works.

With esxtop (pressing "m" to see the memory panel), I can see how much memory is shared, compressed, etc.