Determining if a VM needs more memory for GUEST

[ats0401]

Is there a way from vmware to tell if a vm doesn't have enough RAM for the guest OS? (not host side)

For example, I had a VM with 4GB of ram. The ESX host has plenty of RAM so there is no swapping, ballooning, or any of that going on. The VM is allowed to consume all 4GB.

However, logged into the VM, a user noticed that is was heavily swapping to the page file and performance was suffering - but none of this was visible to me from the VMware side (no CPU\memory shortage from ESX host)

If a VM has consumed most or all of the memory allocated, does this indicate it is short on ram?

Basically I'm wondering if VMware or another product can help me check this across hundreds of VM's.

Right now I'm using perfmon and checking the following values:

Memory, Pages Output/Sec:

Paging File, %pagefile in use:

But it seems there has to be a better way.

[bulletprooffool]

I'd suggest using ESXTOP.

Have a look at Duncan's guide over at

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/esxtop/

- here he specifieds thresholds etc to look out for.

Also, if your are PowerCli inclined, look over at LucD's blog where he'll show you how to do this with PowerCli

http://www.lucd.info/2010/12/03/hitchhikers-guide-to-get-esxtop-part-1/#more-2790

[ats0401]

You completely missed the point of my post. ESXTOP will only show it from the HOST side, not the guest side.

The VM's are getting 100% of the memory requested from ESX - there is no issue at all there.

The issue is determing whether that 100% is adequate enough to keep the guest OS from heavily hitting its page file causing a performance hit.

Right now I'm using perfmon, and I'm asking if there is any vmware specific stats/information that can assist.

Upon further research it looks like CapacityIQ might do this, but I will have to read more on it.

[mittim12]

I like to keep an eye on the active memory counter for the particular VM and then I also use the pages/sec counter in perfmon.    The bottom line if the OS doesn't have enough memory it will page.