ESXi 4 reports 8 GB of RAM in Summary, but only 6 GB in Resource Allocation

[RoFz]

Hello. Home server with 8 GB of physical RAM, ESX recognizes all of them (attached screenshot no.1) but does not make it all available to resource allocation (attached screenshot no. 2). What could be wrong?

BTW. In "Configuration/System Resource Allocation", only 64 MB is destined to ESX.

Any help would be really appreciated.

Cheers

[AntonVZhbankov]

ESXi 4 requires 2GB for itself, so if you have a little amount of RAM ESXi 3.5 is a better choice, while full power of ESX(i) 4 you'll see starting from 16GB.

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MCSA, MCTS, VCP, VMware vExpert '2009

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[AndreTheGiant]

As Anton has written ESX needs some memory, for the hypervisor (vmkernel), the Service Console (on ESXi the management console), the vSwitches, ...

Also each VM has a memory overhead that depends on numer of cores, total vRAM, x64 vs x86, ...

In ESX / Configuration / Memory you see the memory usage.

Andre

[SonyRaymond]

No, I think ESXi 3.5 will also consume 2GB memory, in my case, my host installed with 8GB memory and only 6GB memory

are available to VM guest allocation.

[AntonVZhbankov]

ESXi 3.5 consume less memory than 4.0.

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MCSA, MCTS, VCP, VMware vExpert '2009

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[SonyRaymond]

This is my memory settings in ESXi 3.5

[RoFz]

Anton, please share with us the source of this information regarding memory requirements of ESXi 4.

It's not that i'm in doubt, looks i'm much more like frustrated (i.e. pissed) with this situation since i could not find anything regarding ESXi requirements BEFORE ACTUALLY INSTALLING EVERYTHING.

- Can i migrate all VM's back to ESXi 3.5?

- Is there any way to prevent ESXi 4 to rogue all of that memory?

- And finally, why the f***k ESXi needs 2 GB for itself?

I'm really considering switching to Microsoft's Hyper-V. At least MS has clear documentation and Hyper-V requires only 1 GB of RAM.

Sorry for anything. That's frustration...

Rofz

[Josh26]

I'm really considering switching to Microsoft's Hyper-V. At least MS has clear documentation and Hyper-V requires only 1 GB of RAM.

Rofz

That's the stated, official requirement. Good luck running a server with reasonable response time with 1GB RAM for the host in practice. Microsoft also has clear documentation surrounding running Windows Vista on 512MB RAM.

[AntonVZhbankov]

ESXi Installable and vCenter Server Setup Guide

page 13

VMware ESXi 4.0 will only install and run on servers with 64-bit x86 CPUs.

Known 64-bit processors:

- All AMD Opterons support 64 bit.

- All Intel Xeon 3000/3200, 3100/3300, 5100/5300, 5200/5400, 7100/7300, and 7200/7400 support 64 bit.

- All Intel Nehalem (no Xeon brand number assigned yet) support 64 bit.

2GB RAM minimum

---

MCSA, MCTS, VCP, VMware vExpert '2009

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[AntonVZhbankov]

>Can i migrate all VM's back to ESXi 3.5?

If VMs still have hardware version 4 - yes, without any problems.

---

MCSA, MCTS, VCP, VMware vExpert '2009

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[RoFz]

Josh,

Oh my friend, but with 2 GB of dedicated RAM even Windows Vista would run as an "hypervisor".

Maybe that's what i should do. Run Windows Vista, and VMware Workstation on top of it. The RAM usage would probably be a little less than ESXi 4.

[RoFz]

Anton,

So, "2 GB RAM minimum"... Mmm.

What happens if 2GB is my exact configuration? ESXi seems to allocate a percentage or statistical amount of RAM not a fixed amount, is that correct?

Would you know a way to tweak that setting and allocate less RAM for the hypervisor?

[AndreTheGiant]

You can try the same trick for running ESXi in a VM under Workstation.

See: http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/05/08/running-vsphere-within-workstation-will-take-up-a-lot-of-mem...

Andre