Swap File Not reduced with Memory Reservation

[buchbri]

I have 3 virtual servers on a host. The host has 320GB of ram.

I have 2 at 32GB and my SQL server at 256gb.

Since I won't be over committing RAM i have locked the Ram on all 3 servers.

However when I shutdown a VM and start it back up the swap file returns with the full size

of the RAM.

As you can imagine 320gb of disk that is not usable is a lot.

Please help me get my disk space back.

[scott28tt]

Did the VM go into a powered off state? The swap is created for a VM when you power it on, so it would need to be in an off state first.

[tayfundeger]

Did you select reserve all guest memory? If this option is checked, a swap file should not be created.

In addition, after selecting reserve all guest memory, you need to turn the virtual machine on / off.

[buchbri]

The VM was indeed shut down and I selected reserve all.

I think the issue was the maximum was set to unlimited. I made it match the allocated RAM and powered down again and this time it came back as 0 kb.

.

Should the maximum have to be set as well.

[tayfundeger]

Selecting unlimited memory has nothing to do with the swap. The use of the memory limit option is slightly different. For example, you have assigned 128GB of memory to a virtual machine, and you don't want that virtual machine to exceed 64GB. In this case, you can limit it to 64GB.

However, if you give 128GB to a virtual machine, this virtual machine cannot exceed the 128GB limit. So it doesn't matter if it is unlimited or if you write 128GB in the limit section.