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EvansHarch
Contributor
Contributor

High Cluster Memory Usage

We have 23 Virtual Machines (mostly WIN2k3 servers) across 3x ESX 3.5.0 boxes in one cluster and 3 resource pools.

My issue is we recently moved from 12Ghz CPU and 50Gb RAM to 44Ghz CPU and 74Gb RAM - with little change is performance.

The entire cluster's memory usage (average) for the work day is 116% (low of 48.8%, high of 131.78%) which is the only resource that seems to be in trouble.

Users are complaining across the board of slow performance (10 of the VM's are Terminal Servers).

I'd love some feedback/suggestions on a couple of configurations - good idea, bad idea or worse...

All the Terminal Servers are 4Gb RAM (can't use 64-bit as LoB app is 32-bit only) default resource pool

File and Print and AD server are 2Gb RAM and high resource pool

Exchange Server is 2Gb RAM and High resource pool

Virtual Centre and Licence Server are installed on an external standalone SQL server: 2.4Ghz Processor, 2Gb RAM.

Do I up the RAM even though most are 32bit and have a "physical" limitation of 4Gb?

Thanks in Advance,

Andrew Mc

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ChrisDearden
Expert
Expert

Whats the complete memory breakdown on the cluster ?

10 WTS Boxes @ 4Gb per box.

? F/P/AD @ 2Gb

Exchange @ 2Gb

what else makes up the Memory commitment on the cluster ? How many hosts are you running ?

from what I've seen , I'd avoid going too far beyond 100% commitment for your host memory.

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weinstein5
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Welcome to the forums - do you have any reservations set in the Resource Pools or VMs?

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EvansHarch
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Thanx for the replies guys,

No we don't have reservations. The resource pools only use Shares for management.

All the machines have a total of 72Gb (74Gb are available).

I assumed the 100%+ was the balloon - is that right?

Would you suggest reservations on the low priority machines - will that affect the balloon memory as well?

Thanx

AMc.

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ChrisDearden
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Expert

How many hosts are in the cluster ?

dont forget that not 100% of a hosts memory is available for VM's , or have you taken the service console allocation into effect ?

I tend to run a very small reservation on each guest just go give it enough resources for windows to run ( ~400MHz and 128Mb of RAM usually )

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EvansHarch
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Sorry, there are 3 hosts:

2x with 4 cores 2.569 Ghz and 25Gb each

1 with 8 cores of 2.931 Ghz 24 Gb.

Would limits be better too?

I have shied away from both (limits and resevations) as we were told in the VCP course to only use shares...

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EvansHarch
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Contributor

Also - would you applr reservations per pool or host,

ie. 400 Mhz per machine or simply 4Ghz for a pool with 10 windows VM's in it?

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