Turning OFF Windows Page file aka Virtual Memory in VMs?

[91gsixty]

Just want to know your guys take on, turning off virtual memory, thus elimitating the page file on Windows boxes. Then you would just use the memory on the host boxes.

Pros/Cons?

[Chuck8773]

I have heard of one person that diables page files in Windows. He stated that he just makes sure the OS has enough RAM to never need to use a pagefile. I have never tried this, but curious as the savings in disk could be significant.

Charles Killmer, VCP

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[vmroyale]

Hello.

Check out this blog entry at Mark Russinovich's site - it might possibly be the best Windows virtual memory sizing resource available.

Good Luck!

[bulletprooffool]

Was going to post the same link - Russinovich is the god of page files - also see his sysinternals manual

[Poort443]

And for those of you who would like the conclusion out of this, I quote the same piece:

"Some feel having no paging file results in better performance, but in general, having a paging file means Windows can write pages on the modified list (which represent pages that aren't being accessed actively but have not been saved to disk) out to the paging file, thus making that memory available for more useful purposes (processes or file cache). So while there may be some workloads that perform better with no paging file, in general having one will mean more usable memory being available to the system (never mind that Windows won't be able to write kernel crash dumps without a paging file sized large enough to hold them)."

So, don't turn of your pagefile