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dcoz
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ballooning

Hi guys,

Whats the best way to force a VM to start ballooning?

Thanks

Dougie

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mittim12
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I've seen ballooning start happening if you have a VM with 2 GB of memory assigned and then you put a limit on it of 1 GB.   The ESX host should attempt to balloon out the 1GB extra that was assigned to the VM. 

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jklick
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mittim12 wrote:

I've seen ballooning start happening if you have a VM with 2 GB of memory assigned and then you put a limit on it of 1 GB.   The ESX host should attempt to balloon out the 1GB extra that was assigned to the VM. 

That works under a lot of circumstances, but if the VM is not yet consuming more than the value you set for a limit (i.e. < than 1 GB), ballooning will not appear. 

For guaranteed results, check the performance charts to see what level of memory consumed the VM has.  Then, go into the edit settings for the VM and set a memory limit for a value below the memory consumed level.  The lower the limit, the more dramatic the results.  In fact, after you set the limit, go over to your memory performance chart and watch the ballooning rise.

Out of curiosity, what sort of testing are you doing?

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Jonathan Klick

VKernel Systems Engineer

@JonathanKlick | www.vkernel.com

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mittim12
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I've seen ballooning start happening if you have a VM with 2 GB of memory assigned and then you put a limit on it of 1 GB.   The ESX host should attempt to balloon out the 1GB extra that was assigned to the VM. 

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jklick
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mittim12 wrote:

I've seen ballooning start happening if you have a VM with 2 GB of memory assigned and then you put a limit on it of 1 GB.   The ESX host should attempt to balloon out the 1GB extra that was assigned to the VM. 

That works under a lot of circumstances, but if the VM is not yet consuming more than the value you set for a limit (i.e. < than 1 GB), ballooning will not appear. 

For guaranteed results, check the performance charts to see what level of memory consumed the VM has.  Then, go into the edit settings for the VM and set a memory limit for a value below the memory consumed level.  The lower the limit, the more dramatic the results.  In fact, after you set the limit, go over to your memory performance chart and watch the ballooning rise.

Out of curiosity, what sort of testing are you doing?

----------

Jonathan Klick

VKernel Systems Engineer

@JonathanKlick | www.vkernel.com
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dcoz
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Hi guys,

Thanks for the responses.

I am just getting more familiar with esxtop. I have been using the tools below to stress the vms:

proc - cpu load vbscript

disk - iometer

But didnt have one for stressing memory. I have been using leakapp but wanted to find a quick way to force a vm to balloon.

Do you guys know of any good tools to stress the memory on vms?

Thanks

Dougie

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