6.5.1

Table 1‑113. Data Counters (Continued)
Chart Label Description
Consumed Amount of guest physical memory consumed by the virtual machine for guest memory.
Consumed memory does not include overhead memory. It includes shared memory and
memory that might be reserved, but not actually used.
consumed memory = memory granted - memory saved due to memory sharing
n
Counter: consumed
n
Stats Type: Absolute
n
Unit: Megabytes (MB)
n
Rollup Type: Average (Minimum/Maximum)
n
Collection Level: 1 (4)
Shared Amount of guest physical memory available for sharing. Memory sharing occurs through
transparent page sharing.
n
Counter: shared
n
Stats Type: Absolute
n
Unit: Megabytes (MB)
n
Rollup Type: Average (Minimum/Maximum)
n
Collection Level: 2 (4)
Swapped The amount of guest physical memory swapped out to the disk by the VMkernel. This data
counter measures VMkernel swapping and not to guest OS swapping.
swapped = swapout – swapin
N In some cases, vMotion can skew these values and cause a virtual machine to arrive
on a host with some memory already swapped out. As a result, the swapped value can be
greater than the swapout – swapin value.
n
Counter: swapped
n
Stats Type: Absolute
n
Unit: Megabytes (MB)
n
Rollup Type: Average (Minimum/Maximum)
n
Collection Level: 2 (4)
Chart Analysis
A virtual machine's memory size must be slightly larger than the average guest memory usage. This enables
the host to accommodate workload spikes without swapping memory among guests. Increasing the virtual
machine memory size results in more overhead memory usage.
If sucient swap space is available, a high balloon value does not cause performance problems. However, if
the swapin and swapout values for the host are large, the host is probably lacking the amount of memory
required to meet the demand.
If a virtual machine has high ballooning or swapping, check the amount of free physical memory on the
host. A free memory value of 6% or less indicates that the host cannot meet the memory requirements. This
leads to memory reclamation, which might degrade performance. If the active memory size is the same as
the granted memory size, demand for memory is greater than the memory resources available. If the active
memory is consistently low, the memory size might be too large.
If the host has enough free memory, check the resource shares, reservation, and limit of the virtual machines
and resource pools on the host. Verify that the host seings are adequate and not lower than those set for the
virtual machine.
If lile free memory is available, or if you notice degradation in performance, consider taking the following
actions.
Chapter 1 Monitoring Inventory Objects with Performance Charts
VMware, Inc. 79