vCenter 5.1 - memory usage after upgrade to 5.1

[sssstew]

Hi All

Just a quick question around how much memory you guys have allocated to your Windows 2008 R2 based vCenter 5.1b installs, we recently upgraded from 5.0 and i have seen a marked increase in the amount of memory usage with spikes of over 85%, we have the following setup :-

2vCPUs

4gb RAM

20 Hosts

429 VMs

The only difference between 5.0 and 5.1b for us will be the install of the single sign on service (SQL hosted remotely) and also the install of a vcops 5.6 foundation (but thats not technically on vcenter).

So how much memory are other people running on their vcenters?

Im contemplating upping it to 6gb....

Cheers

Stew

[memaad · Accepted solution]

Hi,

If vCenter Server, vCenter Single Sign-On, and vCenter Inventory Service are installed on the same host machine (as with vCenter Simple Install), 10 GB of RAM are required.

Please refer this kb

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=202120...

Regards

Mohammed

[CSSMP]

I agree, if you're running SQL and all other services on the same box you'll need at min 10gb. I would also recommend if all on the same box you put a limit on SQL to provide a couple gig space for Web Client and other services to operate properly since SQL is a hog and will Cache all the memory which will cause other problems if not set to limit.

Regards, CSSMP

[sssstew]

Cool, thanks guys for the confirmation, i have increased our memory allocated to our VC to 6gb to see how it goes and am considering 8gb in the near future.  Our SQL for all services is hosted off box so hoping that 6-8gb should be good for us.

[CSSMP]

Yeah, if you host SQL off then you don't have to worry about going that high in memory. New v5.1 does use more memory to perform better I noticed after my upgrade as I had problems with Web interface being sluggish and locking up as I originally started at 4gb and moved it up and everything works fine.

Regards, CSSMP

[darkbgr123]

@CSSMP

This is very interesting (SQL limit), can you please elaborate how we can do that for the bundled SQL 2008 R2 DB?

[CSSMP]

I've been adjusting via MS SQL Management Studio by right clicking on SQL Server object and then click on Properties then select Memory in right pane and adjust memory limit as needed. Here's a link on how to do it as it's very easy to do. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms191144(v=sql.105).aspx

See PIC Attached: I have a Windows 2008 R2 Server running SQL 2008 which has 14gb total memory and I set SQL to limit of 10gb and leaves 4gb free for other apps to use. Obviously the size of the memory is based upon your SQL needs, but I left 4gb for other services and my systems have been fine ever since. Remember default SQL settings is dynamic so it'll eventually gobble up just about all the memory unless it's requested to give back because of another app running, but is very slow at doing so. If it's just a SQL server then it might not matter, however if you have SQL and other App's running on the same box I would highly recommend limiting SQL based upon your needs and design.

Regards, CSSMP