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k845
Contributor
Contributor

Swap Usage on a host

I have two servers that are using a high amount of Swap on the same host running ESX 3.5. I'm trying to find out why, what impact this is having on other server and how do I fix it. Any help in explaining this and how to trouble shoot this problem would be nice.

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weinstein5
Immortal
Immortal

Welcome to the Forums - I assume you are referring to the Service Console Swap file - How much memory do you have allocate dto the Service Console? By default this is 272 MB whoch sets the Swap Space to 544 MB - best practice is when you set up your ESX server is to set Service Console memory to 800 MB and the Swap Space to 1600 MB - are you running any thing in the Service Console like a backup agent or hardware agent like insight?

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lnairn
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Hi,

What GuestOS is installed in the VM's?

Those VM's have the Vmware Tools installed?

What is the amount of memory available in the ESX?

When you deploy a new VM you need to install the VM tools in order to work ok.

The last question is what is the total amount of memory in the host, and what is the memory configured to the VM's?

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k845
Contributor
Contributor

I have all of my host Service Console set to run at 800 MB. I'm seeing the Swap to be high on the performance monitor tab for only two of the vm's on the host all of the other are fine.

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arturka
Expert
Expert

Service Console swap size is not related with VM swap configuration. Is used only by service console.

Like for me you have lack of RAM either on VM or on ESXHost. Write me please, if VM is swapping or ESX it self ?

Artur

VCDX77 My blog - http://vmwaremine.com
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k845
Contributor
Contributor

The VM'a are windows 2003 X86 one is running SQl and the other is a file server.

All of my VM's have VMtools installed.

I have 19 of the 32 Gig used at the host level.

4 gig, 3 gig (Vm in Question SQL), 4 gig, 4 gig, 3 gig, 2 gig, 2 gig, 4 gig, 5 @ 1 gig each

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lnairn
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Do you have reservation of memory in those VM's?

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k845
Contributor
Contributor

We don't have any reservation of memory set.

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arturka
Expert
Expert

do you have any resource pools ? did you played with changing a RAM memory value ?

VCDX77 My blog - http://vmwaremine.com
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k845
Contributor
Contributor

We do have several resource pools but they are the default settings. We created them to group production, test and dev servers together.

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lnairn
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

In the performace tab for those virtual machine, in memory, wat is the max number for ballooning

In order to fix this you can reserve the amount of memory for those VM.

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k845
Contributor
Contributor

When I look at the performance tab, memory. Memory balloon is 0 for all of one of the server. see the attached screen shot.

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