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mtsmbr
Contributor
Contributor

increasing memory to vcenter server

hi guys....i have a physical machine which vcenter 4 is installed , this machine has a lot of memory and i want to make use of it....which parameters can i change to increase all vcenter services memory usage?

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AndreTheGiant
Immortal
Immortal

You have to power-off VC, use VIC to connect directly to ESX, increase mem limit on VC, then power-on again.

Andre

Andrew | http://about.me/amauro | http://vinfrastructure.it/ | @Andrea_Mauro
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VMmatty
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

I'm not sure if there are any specific options available to tweak VC to use more memory if it is available. How much memory is in the server right now? Is it more than 4GB and if so are you using a 64-bit OS? If you're using a 64-bit OS and have more than 4GB then you should be able to take advantage of the extra RAM.

That said you don't really need that much RAM unless you have a vCenter server that manages a large number (over 100) ESX hosts. If you have a smaller environment then the RAM is better used in the ESX hosts rather than the vCenter server itself.

Matt | http://www.thelowercasew.com | @mattliebowitz
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Troy_Clavell
Immortal
Immortal

as stated if vCenter is installed on physical hardware, adding more RAM will only help if your OS in which vCenter is installed on can see it. W2k3 Standard is limited to max 4GB, Enterprise will need /pae switch.

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEdrv.mspx

....with that said, if you are looking for better performance out of vCenter, I would tend to look more towards the DB. Make sure you have your DB installed on another server. We use a clustered W2k3 x64 sql server.

.

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mtsmbr
Contributor
Contributor

in fact its windows 2003 64 bits and dont laugh , 48gb of ram...hehe i wanna increase all VCenter memory parameters...but not sure which ones..

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LEslinger
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Are you using SQL Express, Standard, or Enterprise? Are these installed on the same hardware?

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mtsmbr
Contributor
Contributor

no...the database is running on a oracle 10g rac on HP-UX itanium

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LEslinger
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Th best you can probably do use the /3GB switch in the Boot.ini file. By design, a process in Windows 2003 can only access 4GB memory (2 GB for the OS 2GB for the process) unless it is specifically written to use AWE which i don't think VC is.

The /3GB swith will assign 3GB to the process and 1GB to the OS.

The /PAE switch allows the OS to access physically memory above 4GB.

Using the /3GB and /PAE together is not recommended without testing first....especially if you are using SAN disk.

Use the following to verify memory usage before and after the /3GB switch to determine its usefullness

How to view the Virtual Address Space currently in use by a process

http://networkadminkb.com/kb/Knowledge%20Base/Windows2003/How%20to%20view%20the%20Virtual%20Address%...

Here is more information

The memory architecture of the Windows operating system allocates 4GB of RAM to every process. By default this is allocated as 2GB to OS and 2GB to the process. The /3GB switch allows memory to be allocated as 1GB to the OS and 3GB to the process. The entire 4GB is called a Virtual Address Space (VAS), and the two parts are referred to as the System VAS and the User VAS.

Furthermore, by default the memory architecture of Windows operating system is limited to 4GB total physical RAM. However, by adding the /PAE switch to the Boot.ini the Enterprise and Data Center versions of Windows 2003, the OS can access more than 4GB physical memory. Windows 2003 Standard Edition is limited to 4GB of RAM and does not support Physical Address Extensions (PAE).

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mtsmbr
Contributor
Contributor

well , my windows 2003 64 bits can see the whole 48gb of ram , do i need to modify boot.ini anyway? what i wanted to do is to modify the vcenter processes parameters to use more physical mem (for example more ram to the vpxd.exe and to the tom cats web access)

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LEslinger
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I'm not aware of any parameters. I overlooked the fact that you are running 64bit os. You can still use link i provided to monitor the memory usage of the vpxa process to find out what it is currently using, but the other information mostly applies to 32bit OS.

Good luck.

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