Memory Reclamation in "high state"

[dutch889]

I understand that memory reclaimation techniques will begin to ramp up prior to ESX moving from one memory state to the other, so aside from that, why would SWCUR in ESXTOP be anything other than 0 if ESX is in a high state?

Also, why would all ballooning metrics be 0, but SWCUR be greater than zero?  Does ESX reclaim idle memory even when the memory state of the ESX server is high?

Also, what metrics determine the memory state?  Is is consumed or active?

Many thanks!

[rickardnobel]

dutch889 wrote:

Also, why would all ballooning metrics be 0, but SWCUR be greater than zero? 

That could be because the ballooning is directly controlled by the vmkernel. If there at any point was needed both ballooning and swapping and both was done - then the memory demand got lower and the "balloon driver" released all its taken memory, however the swapped parts will not be "re-swapped" back by itself, but will wait until the VM actually accesses them.

If you see SWCUR greater than 0 in this situation it is likely just memory that the VM has not used for a long time.