VMware Horizon Community
richardOST
Contributor
Contributor

Instant Clone - Parent VM Virtual Machine Memory Usage Warning

Hello,

Does anyone else, while using Instant Clone desktop pools, notice that all the "cp-parent-#######" throw Virtual Machine Memory Usage warnings? It seems like in this environment every single parent will continuously sit at 85% - 95% memory usage. Which then triggers the alarm because they will remain in this state 24/7 based on what I have seen.

Horizon 7.0.3

vSphere 6.0U3

vSAN (4-node cluster) All Flash

Windows 10 Enterprise 1607 desktops

Thanks,

Richard

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5 Replies
PCTechStream
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Take a look at this thread, maybe this can help you!

LINK: cp-parent machines - why are there so many, when I only have 4 hosts and 3 pools?

Raul.

VMware VDI Administrator

http://ITCloudStream.com/

www.ITSA.Cloud
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richardOST
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks! That thread is interesting but was not a discussion on memory usage. Thanks!

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TechMassey
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

I have not done any real world testing of Instant clones....no vGPU support until 7.1 dropped a couple weeks ago. However, I understand the architecture and I know VDI memory issues. I am curious, given that the parent VM must be powered on for instant clones. Have you checked the Guest OS processes for memory consumption and have you tried a non-instant clone VDI pool and monitor VDI desktops?

The big issue with VDI is windows and ESXi have a very different opinion on how much memory is being consumed. Eliminating the possibility you have a memory reservation set on the VM, I suspect a Guest OS issue. Try using Remote Process Explorer to remotely review the process memory usage inside the Guest OS. It is quite indispensable for me.


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jmatz135
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

So the memory usage on the parent VM is actually supposed to fill up as apparently that memory is shared between the VMs spun up off of them.  In theory to actually reduce memory usage and to allow for fast spin off of the new VMs.  In a large pool this may be true, but as you may have noticed in a small pool you get a lot of parent VMs using a lot of memory.  As for the alarms I don't think there is a way at this moment to have parent VMs ignored even though they are doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing.

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Erossman
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I can confirm that the high memory usage warning is a normal behavior for instant clones pool.

The bad thing is that I don't find a solution how I can exclude each parent VM from this alert in the vcenter. It seems so that there is actuallly no way how you can automatic suppress this alert on all parent VMs.

If you have multiple pools and hosts you will have a lot of parent VMs with this warnung.

It's than difficult to see any other warning/errors in the enviroment which can imput the user vdi vm.

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