6.7

The following user-defined settings affect the memory resource allocation of a virtual machine.
Limit Places a limit on the consumption of memory for a virtual machine. This
value is expressed in megabytes.
Reservation Specifies the guaranteed minimum allocation for a virtual machine. The
reservation is expressed in megabytes. If the reservation cannot be met,
the virtual machine will not turn on.
Shares Each virtual machine is granted a number of memory shares. The more
shares a virtual machine has, the greater share of host memory it receives.
Shares represent a relative metric for allocating memory capacity. For more
information about share values, see the vSphere Resource Management
documentation.
You cannot assign a reservation to a virtual machine that is larger than its configured memory. If you give
a virtual machine a large reservation and reduce its configured memory size, the reservation is reduced to
match the new configured memory size.
Prerequisites
Verify that the virtual machine is turned off.
Procedure
1 Right-click a virtual machine in the inventory and select Edit Settings.
2 On the Virtual Hardware tab, expand Memory, and allocate the memory capacity for the virtual
machine.
Option Description
Reservation Guaranteed memory allocation for this virtual machine.
Limit Upper limit for this virtual machine’s memory allocation. Select Unlimited to
specify no upper limit.
Shares The values Low, Normal, High, and Custom are compared to the sum of all
shares of all virtual machines on the server.
3 Click OK.
Change Memory Hot Add Settings
Memory hot add lets you add memory resources for a virtual machine while that virtual machine is turned
on.
Enabling memory hot add produces some memory overhead on the ESXi host for the virtual machine.
Prerequisites
n
Power off the virtual machine.
n
Verify that the virtual machine has a guest operating system that supports memory hot add
functionality.
vSphere Virtual Machine Administration
VMware, Inc. 97