Memory Explanation on ESX Host

[stevewalker]

Hi

Could anyone help?

I have 32 gig of RAM in a Dell 2950.

I can see the following config of memory on the host:

service console 272 mb RAM

system 2.44 gig RAM

VM 29 gig RAM

Obviously these figures add up to 32 gig but how does the Host calculate the 2.44 gig for the system?

Is it worth increasing the service console ram for any reason.

Thanks

Steve

[jjkrueger]

You can find more information about memory overhead for ESX in the Resource Management Guide on page 128.

As for the service console menory, you would want to increase that if you have, say, a backup agent or a hardware monitoring agent (Dell OpenManage, probably, as you have a Dell box), or other software installed in the service console. You can allocate up to 800MB of RAM to the service console, but you need to plan for that, as that should also be paired with an increase of your service console swap. The default swap partition created is 544MB (twice the default 272MB of service console RAM). You would want to follow the 2x RAM rule for your swap partition if you increase the amount of RAM allocated to your service console.

hope that helps,

-jk

[stevewalker]

Thanks JK that is really helpful

Do you have any idea what the system memory of 2.4 gig is actually reserved for?

Currently server has no vm's and it appears to be a static entry for the system memory?

[lholling]

Hi Steve

Here is the information on the System Memory. It is from an ESX 2.0 document but I believe that the same rules applyhttp://www.vmware.com/support/esx2/doc/esx20admin_res-mem-sizing-intro.html

Virtual Machine Memory Pool

The remaining pool of system memory is used for running virtual machines. ESX Server manages the allocation of this memory to virtual machines automatically based on administrative parameters and system load. ESX Server also attempts to keep some memory free at all times in order to handle dynamic allocation requests efficiently. ESX Server sets this level at approximately 6 percent of the memory available for running virtual machines.

Leonard...

[stevewalker]

You can allocate up to 800MB of RAM to the service console, but you need to plan for that, as that should also be paired with an increase of your service console swap. The default swap partition created is 544MB (twice the default 272MB of service console RAM). You would want to follow the 2x RAM rule for your swap partition if you increase the amount of RAM allocated to your service console.

Does anyone know if you can resize the service console swap file or does it ESX need to be rebuilt?

Do you have any offical doc info on the service console swap file relation to the RAM allocated?

Thanks

Steve

[darren_boyd]

Texiwill discusses swap files including outlining a method of adding a secondary swap partition to an ESX host in this post http://communities.vmware.com/message/484615. It's definitely worth a read.