Weird reported active memory usage vs vm memory usage

[zaspam]

Hi all,

I found that the active memory reported by vCenter (6.5d) is actually much higher than the memory that is being reported as used by the VM.

Usually, it used to be the other way around, the vm would report a much higher memory usage and the active memory usage would be significantly lower.

It is this discrepancy in the counters that I have grown used to live with, but this reversal baffles me.

Do you know of a plausible explanation to this behavior.

[vijayrana968]

Are VMware tools up to date ? Can you paste snapshot of VM memory usage at vCenter level.

[zaspam]

Yes vmTools are up to date.

It's a simple web server with really a minimal services.

Here are the images:

the selected counter is the active memory counter.

vs

[vijayrana968]

Can you post the following information.

[zaspam]

Here it is:

[vijayrana968 · Accepted solution]

This seems to be known issue, and we can expect to fix in coming updates. Do you have enabled any PCi Passthroug device on this VM. If Yes then check guide for memory reservation.

VM Memory Usage heuristic over-reporting on ESXi 6.5

Incorrect memory utlization for 1 VM Web Client 6.5

[zaspam]

No there is no passthrough enabled on the VM. It's a basic web server.

[zaspam]

Thank you very much for your time.

I looked around but I couldn't find the articles you mentioned.

Thanks once again!

[vijayrana968]

Then we must consider this if there's no any performance issue at guest OS level VM Memory Usage heuristic over-reporting on ESXi 6.5