6.7

Table Of Contents
Table 187. Data Counters (Continued)
Chart Label Description
Consumed Amount of the physical memory consumed by the virtual machine for the guest memory.
Consumed memory does not include the overhead memory. It includes the 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)
Granted Sum of the guest physical memory granted for all powered on virtual machines. Granted
memory is mapped to the host's machine memory.
n
Counter: granted
n
Stats Type: Absolute
n
Unit: Megabytes (MB)
n
Rollup Type: Average (Minimum/Maximum)
n
Collection Level: 2 (4)
Shared Amount of the guest physical memory shared with other virtual machines in the resource
pool.
Swapped Sum of the memory swapped by all powered on virtual machines in the resource pool.
n
Counter: swapused
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 sufficient 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 settings are adequate and not lower than
those set for the virtual machine.
vSphere Monitoring and Performance
VMware, Inc. 72