Rightsizing the pagefile of guest VMs

[marius1]

Is there any guideline to rigtsize the pagefile for guest (Windows) VMs?

With hosted versions of VMware (Workstation and Server) I used to create a pagefile whose size was RAM * 2 and to place it on a disk different from the boot/system disk: can it be right for VMware ESXi as weel?

Is there any better solution?

Regards

Marius

[TomHowarth]

use the same rule as you would for a Physical server ie 1.5 times Memory

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Tom Howarth VCP / vExpert

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Blog: www.planetvm.net

Contributing author for the upcoming book "[VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing ESX and the Virtual Environment|http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780136083214]”. Currently available on roughcuts

[marius1]

Thank you for your advice.

Any ideas about the best way to place the pagefile? I mean, on the system (virtual)disk, on a data (virtual)disk, on a dedicated (virtual)disk or elsewere?

Regards

Marius

[J1mbo · Accepted solution]

that will depend entirely on the organisation of the underlying hardware and the OS & app load on those drives. That said, usually it's not a big deal provided the machines have enough RAM anyway.

[LucasAlbers]

if the pagefile is static in size, it shouldn't matter whetehr the pagefile is on the default os drive, or another disk.

Why make things even more complex than they need to be?

Assuming as the previous poster mentioned, that you are not paging out, which should not happen if you have adequate memory.

i considered splitting out the pagefile, but in practice could not justify any performance improvement.