VMware Communities
Egonj
Contributor
Contributor

Memory Usage Doubled

Running VMWare Fusion 12.1 on a Mac Pro 2013 with Big Sur. 128GB of RAM

Noticed that in activity monitor vmware-vmx is utilizing 32.16GB of RAM. However, the VM is only assigned 16GB of RAM.

This after a reboot and restart of the host OS. The OS is only reporting 16GB of RAM available. On a Second VM, I have it assigned to 16GB of RAM Also, and after starting it up and letting it get everything going it's using almost 26GB of RAM. Without starting any applications. 

Previously, VMWare only used the amount of RAM that's been assigned in the VM?

Anyone else seeing the same thing?

Is this a reporting bug in Big Sur? Is there a memory leak somewhere?

Reply
0 Kudos
14 Replies
cneisme
Contributor
Contributor

I have the exact same problem with every VM I use - new or older ones.  It looks like a memory leak.  My 16gig VM starts out at around 16gig and over the next couple of hours just sitting will work up to 28Gig.  This is new with 12.x.  Something is wrong with the product and a defect needs to be created.

Reply
0 Kudos
HurcoMv
Contributor
Contributor

I'm thinking it might be a display or reporting issue with activity monitor on Big Sur. In my case I have an 8GB VM and it is showing as using 15.18GB memory in the activity monitor. If I click on the vmware-vmx process and then click on the Information icon in the toolbar, real memory is 8.32 GB. VM is 64 TB, shared memory is 87.5 MB and Private memory is 63.7 MB.

The activity monitor shows Physical memory of 32GB (in my case), memory used 19.25 GB, Cached Files 11.26 GB and swap 1.48 GB. So if the VM was actually using 15 GB of memory I'd expect memory used to be around 27 GB (15.18 + 11.26 + 1.48).

I've not noticed any performance issues or crashes like we had a few months back with the buggy Catalina update that affected VM software like Fusion.

Reply
0 Kudos
az0bcd1
Contributor
Contributor

I've only just installed Fusion (12.1.1) and the VM is set to 8GB. Currently Activity Monitor is showing 14.9GB (if I look at the process....

 

Real Memory Size: 6.92GB

Virtual Memory Size 64.02TB.....yes that's TB

On a 32GB system with nothing else running (and the VM just downloading a windows update) I'm at 15.37GB used and swap used at 1.14GB!

This is not normal behaviour. 

Reply
0 Kudos
wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hi,

Interesting...

Try changing the virtual hardware version of your VM from version 18 to version 16.

The virtual memory size will change from 64TB to 16TB (Still an ungodly high number)

You can change the virtual hardware with the VM shut down (not suspended), menu "Virtual Machine" -> "Settings" -> Compatibility

FWIW, on virtual hardware version 12 that virtual memory size is 8TB and on vHW 10, the virtual memory size is 2TB

Not sure if any of this helps...

--
Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
Reply
0 Kudos
gringley
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

It does help.  In my case I downgraded to hardware version 17 (which turns off DirectX 11 support) and tada both my VMs were running under their memory allocation and closer to the memory in use in the Windows OS.

Reply
0 Kudos
az0bcd1
Contributor
Contributor

That did it.

The memory usage went from 16.3GB (I had allocated 8GB) to 8.5GB after setting it to HW 17. Still saying 64TB Virtual memory size but that's ok as long as it doesn't try to use it all 🙂

Reply
0 Kudos
gringley
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Has anyone seen any evidence that VMware is trying to fix this?  I was checking my boot camp in the wake of 11.3 and see the problem exists with the boot camp VM as well.

Reply
0 Kudos
gringley
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

I left a Windows 10 VM on today with 8GB of RAM on HW 18 and it is sitting at 22GB several hours later.  Something other than silence from VMware would be helpful here.

Reply
0 Kudos
HurcoMv
Contributor
Contributor

My 8 GB Windows 10 machine is showing 16.3 GB in Activity monitor, and is also set to hardware revision 18.

However, if you double-click on the actual vmx process, it shows there as using 8.3 GB Real memory and in a ps display, RSS is 8.7 GB.

So maybe the activity monitor display in Big Sur isn't correct?

 

 

Reply
0 Kudos
gringley
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

I see what you see.  Not sure what to think?

Reply
0 Kudos
HurcoMv
Contributor
Contributor

My gut feeling is that the activity monitor display might be wrong or is showing something that is not quite what we might think. If you add the "real memory" column to the display, that shows 8.3 GB in my case, but for mail it shows about double the memory column value!

Reply
0 Kudos
gringley
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

I put some time into it and I see I am raising a false alarm about the memory.  I launched four Windows guests and found that the "real memory" in the process information corresponded to the Task Manager memory usage by the guest.  Seems OK?

Reply
0 Kudos
scott28tt
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Note that VMTN is a user community forum, not an official pathway to get messages to the Fusion team at VMware.

You might get employees from the Fusion team popping in here and reading threads from time to time (I'm not one of them though)

 


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Although I am a VMware employee I contribute to VMware Communities voluntarily (ie. not in any official capacity)
VMware Training & Certification blog
Reply
0 Kudos
EMPF1969
Contributor
Contributor

Good Friends,

 

What does not make sense, is that VMware uses beside of the RAM (16GB) another (32GB) for the vmware-vmx,

Then the Graphics Memory (16GB) of the eGPU RX6900XT... 

Surely one ought to know how to explain this since vmware-vmx is not self created is it? lol

Good day,

Reply
0 Kudos