Hi,
ESXi uses advanced memory technologies like Ballooning, Deduplication and Compression.
I am curious, does Workstation (or Fusion) use any of them?
Thanks.
The only I believe it uses is balloning - it really cannot do the others because the host O/S will have control over the physical memory
I have been searching the web, trying to find an answer.
What I found is a PDF about version 7.0 of Workstation:-
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/ws7_performance.pdf
On page 19, it says:-
"Workstation 7.0 uses three memory management mechanisms, page sharing, ballooning, and swapping, to dynamically reduce the amount of machine physical memory required for each virtual machine."
And this is for version 7.0, so maybe by version 9.0 it uses all the technologies of ESXi? I wonder if they use the same basic engine. It would be nice to know. Maybe someone here from VMWare can clarify...
The virtualization engine is the same. However, most of these technologies are implemented in the platform (i.e. the vmkernel). Ballooning is implemented primarily in the guest, so it is available on all platforms.