6.0

Associate Memory Allocations with Specific NUMA Nodes Using Memory
Affinity
You can specify that all future memory allocations on a virtual machine use pages associated with specific
NUMA nodes (also known as manual memory affinity).
NOTE Specify nodes to be used for future memory allocations only if you have also specified CPU affinity.
If you make manual changes only to the memory affinity settings, automatic NUMA rebalancing does not
work properly.
Prerequisites
Launch the vSphere Client and log in to a vCenter Server system.
Procedure
1 In the vSphere Client, right-click the virtual machine in the inventory and select Edit Settings.
2 Select the Resources tab, and select Memory.
3 In the NUMA Memory Affinity panel, set memory affinity.
Example: Binding a Virtual Machine to a Single NUMA Node
The following example illustrates manually binding the last four physical CPUs to a single NUMA node for
a two-way virtual machine on an eight-way server.
The CPUs (for example, 4, 5, 6, and 7) are the physical CPU numbers.
1 In the vSphere Client inventory panel, select the virtual machine and select Edit Settings.
2 Select Options and click Advanced.
3 Click the Configuration Parameters button.
4 In the vSphere Client, turn on CPU affinity for processors 4, 5, 6, and 7.
Then, you want this virtual machine to run only on node 1.
1 In the vSphere Client inventory panel, select the virtual machine and select Edit Settings.
2 Select Options and click Advanced.
3 Click the Configuration Parameters button.
4 In the vSphere Client, set memory affinity for the NUMA node to 1.
Completing these two tasks ensures that the virtual machine runs only on NUMA node 1 and, when
possible, allocates memory from the same node.
Associate Virtual Machines with Specified NUMA Nodes
When you associate a NUMA node with a virtual machine to specify NUMA node affinity, you constrain
the set of NUMA nodes on which NUMA can schedule a virtual machine's virtual CPU and memory.
NOTE When you constrain NUMA node affinities, you might interfere with the ability of the ESXi NUMA
scheduler to rebalance virtual machines across NUMA nodes for fairness. Specify NUMA node affinity only
after you consider the rebalancing issues.
Prerequisites
Launch the vSphere Client and log in to a vCenter Server system.
vSphere Administration with the vSphere Client
380 VMware, Inc.