Memory Active
Units: KB Internal Name: active
Amount of guest physical memory recently used by the VM, which is estimated by
VMkernel statistical sampling.
Memory Consumed
Units: KB Internal Name: consumed
Amount of machine memory allocated to the VM, accounting for savings from memory
sharing with other VMs. Memory Overhead is not included.
When multiple VMs are sharing a single region of machine memory, each VM is
“charged” for the memory proportionally based on the total references to that region of
shared memory. For instance, if a VM has 100 MB of memory that is shared equally
with three other VMs, then that VM’s portion of the shared memory is only 25 MB (100
MB / 4 VMs) for the Memory Consumed statistic.
Memory Granted
Units: KB Internal Name: granted
Amount of guest physical memory currently mapped to (i.e., backed by) machine
memory. Memory Overhead is not included, but Memory Shared is.
Note that this is not the amount of machine memory used by the VM; Memory
Consumed measures a VM’s machine memory usage.
So what's the difference? Consumed is from the HOST perspective, Granted is MAPPED memory, including what is shared between VM's and Active is from the VM (guest OS) perspective .
