How to Increase Video RAM

[socalvm]

I recently installed ESXi 4.0.0 (Dell PE1950 64Bit server); created a Windows 7 VM (x86 OS). The VM starts up, but I receive the following:

Message from vmhost-11.localdomain: Insufficient video RAM. The maximum resolution of the virtual machine will be limited to 1176x885 at 16 bits per pixel.

To use the configured maximum resolution of 2360x1770 at 16 bits per pixel, increase the amount of video RAM allocated to this virtual machine by setting

svga.vramSize="16708800" in the virtual machine's configuration file.

My question is how increase the video RAM in the config file? With ESXi 3.x, I had the ability to SSH to the server and access the config file. Using the vSphere PowerCL, I'm don't see a way to increase this as recommended.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

MR

[K-MaC]

Hello. You could use the Datastore browser in the VI client. Grab the file make the changes and then replace it.

Cheers

Kevin

[LucD]

You can use the following script.

It changes the video Ram to support a 2560 x 2048 resolution.

I used KB1003 for the formula.

$vmName = <VM-name>
$vm = Get-VM $vmName | Get-View

$width = 2560
$height = 2048

$videoRam = $width * $height * 4

$dev = $vm.Config.Hardware.Device | where {$_.GetType().Name -eq "VirtualMachineVideoCard"}
	
$spec = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualMachineConfigSpec
$devConfig = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualDeviceConfigSpec
$devConfig.device = $dev
$devConfig.device.videoRamSizeInKB = $videoRam/1KB
$devConfig.operation = "edit"
$spec.deviceChange += $devConfig

$vm.ReconfigVM($spec)

Note1: the script could be extended by a test to check if the new video ramsize was less than 4MB (which is the default size)

In that case there is no need to change the value.

Note2: you can't use the ReconfigVM method with the extraconfig property. If there is a method available to change a specific VMX entry (svga.vramSize in this case) then that method is not available.