Win 10 VM grabs DOUBLE the RAM allocated in Fusion Player 12.2.1

[RayButler]

I'm using:

• Fusion Player 12.2.1
• Mac Mini (2018-model 3.2 GHz 6-Core Intel Core i7) with 64 GB RAM and Big Sur.

I allocated 24 GB RAM and 4 (of 12) cores to the Win 10 VM.

But when it runs, the vmware-vmx process on the host Mac uses ~ 47.5 GB of the 64 GB RAM.

This is suspiciously close to 2x the 24 GB that I allocated in the VM settings!

I see others reporting that Fusion 12.2.1 crippled their VM's performance...could this RAM demand be the underlying reason?

Win 10 VM ~ 47.5 GB; High Sierra VM ~ 15.5 GB

I also run a macOS High Sierra VM (for some legacy 32-bit programs). I allocated 16 GB RAM and its vmware-vmx process never exceeds 16 GB. This is the expected, correct behaviour. Only the Win 10 VM has the RAM-doubling issue.

Ray

[Technogeezer]

Is your Mac complaining about “memory pressure”? The graph below this per process display in the Activity Monitor would be trending toward yellow or red indicating excessive paging/swapping. If that happens then memory contention is impacting performance .

Also you have 6 physical cores in that Mac Mini, not 12. Best practice is to allocate vCPUs to a VM based on the number of physical cores, not hyperthreaded cores. Otherwise you risk over subscribing CPU resources. 

[Technogeezer]

What virtual hardware version do you have configured for your VM?  Also see this thread https://communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Fusion-Discussions/VM-s-using-double-RAM-then-assigned/td-p...