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Table Of Contents
Table 194. Memory Performance Enhancement Advice
# Resolution
1 Verify that VMware Tools is installed on each virtual machine.
2 Verify that the balloon driver is enabled. The balloon driver is installed with VMware Tools and is critical to performance. The
VMkernel regularly reclaims unused virtual machine memory by ballooning and swapping. Generally, it does not impact virtual
machine performance.
3 If the balloon value is high, check the resource shares, reservations, and limits for the virtual machines and resource pools on
the hosts. Verify that the host's settings are adequate and not lower than those set for the virtual machine. If free memory is
available on the hosts and the virtual machines are experiencing high swap or balloon memory, the virtual machine (or
resource pool, if it belongs to one) has reached its resource limit. Check the maximum resource limit set on that host.
4 If the cluster is not a DRS cluster, enable DRS. To enable DRS, perform the following tasks:
1 Select the cluster, and click the Configure tab.
2 Under Services, click vSphere DRS.
3 click Edit.
An Edit Cluster Settings dialog box opens.
4 Click Turn ON vSphere DRS, and click OK.
5 If the cluster is a DRS cluster:
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Increase the number of hosts, and migrate one or more virtual machines to the new host.
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Check the aggressiveness threshold. If the value is low, increase the threshold. It might help avoid hot spots in the
cluster.
6 Add more physical memory to one or more hosts.
Memory Consumed
The Memory Consumed chart displays the memory performance of the top ten virtual machines in the
vApp or resource pool.
This chart is located in the Virtual Machines view of the vApp or resource pool Performance tab.
For resource pools and virtual machines in a resource pool or vApp, this chart is located in the Resource
Pools & Virtual Machines view of the resource pool or vApp Performance tab.
Table 195. Data Counters
Chart Label Description
virtual_machine Amount of host memory used by the virtual machine for its guest operating system's physical memory.
Memory overhead is not included in consumed memory.
consumed memory = memory granted - memory saved from page sharing
For example, if a virtual machine has 100 MB of memory that is shared equally with three other virtual
machines, its portion of the shared memory is 25 MB (100 MB ÷ 4 VMs). This amount is counted in the
memory consumed data counter.
n
Counter: consumed
n
Stats Type: Absolute
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Unit: Megabytes (MB)
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Rollup Type: Average (Minimum/Maximum)
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Collection Level: 1 (4)
vSphere Monitoring and Performance
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