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kennybl
Contributor
Contributor

Guest mem issue with 64bit vm's running on quad core processor host

Hi all, newbie here as well as my first post so I hope this is going in the right place.

I've got a number of HP DL585 G5 hosts with the 8354 Quad Core Opteron processors, 64gb ram, 8 physical nics that are hosting both 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Server 2003. For some reason the 64bit vm's are always taking 65% and higher guest memory whereas the 32bit vm's are sitting down 1-4% (on average).

Now the interesting thing is I have another farm of DL585 G2 hosts with the 8222 SE Dual-Core Opteron processors running 32 and 64 bit vm's built from the same templates as the above farm, and their guest memory is down between 1-5% (on average).

Was there something I missed from a configuration stand point when standing up these new Quad Core processor hosts? Both groups of hosts are pretty much the same hardware config except for the newer Quad Core processors........(all have 64gb ram, 8 physical nics, dual hba's etc...)

Any thoughts? (I'm sure I've missed some configuration point somewhere........) Oh and I guess it would help to say I'm running ESX 3.5 Update 4

Thanx

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VMmatty
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Are you seeing the high memory utilizaiton from vCenter or from within the guest OS? If from vCenter, how does it look inside the guest OS on those 64-bit VMs?

Matt | http://www.thelowercasew.com | @mattliebowitz
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kennybl
Contributor
Contributor

Just from vCenter...inside the quest os looks normal..........also doesnt seem to matter whether the vm is configured for 1gb, 2gb, or 4gb of ram...........vCenter says 60% or higher (sometimes 80 or higher) but inside the os always looks good..................

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VMmatty
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Weird. It sounds very similar to a problem with ESX 4 and certain processors (described in the KB below) but that isn't the case for you. Have you looked at the ESX level (esxtop) to see if the VM is really using that much memory?

Matt | http://www.thelowercasew.com | @mattliebowitz
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kennybl
Contributor
Contributor

I have not used esxtop yet....will dig into it now and see what it comes up with..............just need to do a little reading to understand how to use the tool etc.... thanx!

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kennybl
Contributor
Contributor

HHHMMMM just launched the esxtop tool, havnt used it before, but it shows pretty much the same memory utilization that the vc console shows.........I'll probably call vmware this morning and see if they've got any ideas...........will post here what we find..............thanx

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