ESXi and vCenter appliance -what can be turned off to save memory?

[PF4VMware]

Hi all

I am running ESXi 5 server, Nexus 1000v and vCenter virtual appliance all virtualized in VMWare workstation running on Ubuntu x64 with 8G of memory

Apparenty the biggest memory requirements come from Vcenter. Does anybody know what I can turn off (any services that I might not need?)?

I am just trying to familiarize myself with Nexus 1000v, I won't need much more than that

Here is what I allocated:

1. ESXi 5 is running in  3.2M of memory -running Nexus1000v in a virtual machine with 1G allocated for this
2. vCenter virtual applaince -2G ..the machine is up I can access it via the console but I can not by using the vsphere client... I believe that some database service failed to start

What can I do to get this working?

thanks

PF

[AureusStone]

There are a few services you can disable, but ultimately it isn't worth the work.  A few MB here and there is still only a few MB.

If you are running guests on your vSphere hosts you can turn off large pages to save some RAM.  Large pages are on by default in vSphere 5.  Large pages increase performance, but due to the large 2MB block size, it disables TPS.  When you run in to memory contention vSphere will automatically disable large pages and dedupe your memory.

In vSphere 4.0 you disable large pages by doing the following.  It should be the same in vSphere 5.0.  You should get vCenter working first.

Click on host -> Configuration tab -> Software -> Advanced Settings -> Mem -> Mem.AllocGuestLargePage = 0

The vCenter appliance should just work.  Are you using the default DB?  Are you using the IP address to connect to the vCenter server or the DNS name?  Either check the logs or redeploy vCenter.

[PF4VMware]

Hi AureusStone

thanks a lot for your suggestin

I disabled that ..I will see if that solves the problem at least for vSphere...

VSphere was OK I could trim down the memory for that one..the one that doesn't seem to be all right is vcenter...any suggestions for that one?

I am using the local DB it is the virtual appliance version. I am using the IP. after increasing the memory it OK now

[AndreTheGiant]

The vCenter Server (appliance or not) require a lot of RAM... so your really cannot reduce it under 2 GB.

About the DB see the installation guide, in order to configure the virtual appliance.