6.5.1

Table Of Contents
The following table shows the default CPU and memory share values for a virtual machine. For resource
pools, the default CPU and memory share values are the same, but must be multiplied as if the resource
pool were a virtual machine with four virtual CPUs and 16 GB of memory.
Table 21. Share Values
Setting CPU share values Memory share values
High 2000 shares per virtual CPU 20 shares per megabyte of congured virtual
machine memory.
Normal 1000 shares per virtual CPU 10 shares per megabyte of congured virtual
machine memory.
Low 500 shares per virtual CPU 5 shares per megabyte of congured virtual machine
memory.
For example, an SMP virtual machine with two virtual CPUs and 1GB RAM with CPU and memory shares
set to Normal has 2x1000=2000 shares of CPU and 10x1024=10240 shares of memory.
N Virtual machines with more than one virtual CPU are called SMP (symmetric multiprocessing)
virtual machines. ESXi supports up to 128 virtual CPUs per virtual machine.
The relative priority represented by each share changes when a new virtual machine is powered on. This
aects all virtual machines in the same resource pool. All of the virtual machines have the same number of
virtual CPUs. Consider the following examples.
n
Two CPU-bound virtual machines run on a host with 8GHz of aggregate CPU capacity. Their CPU
shares are set to Normal and get 4GHz each.
n
A third CPU-bound virtual machine is powered on. Its CPU shares value is set to High, which means it
should have twice as many shares as the machines set to Normal. The new virtual machine receives
4GHz and the two other machines get only 2GHz each. The same result occurs if the user species a
custom share value of 2000 for the third virtual machine.
Resource Allocation Reservation
A reservation species the guaranteed minimum allocation for a virtual machine.
vCenter Server or ESXi allows you to power on a virtual machine only if there are enough unreserved
resources to satisfy the reservation of the virtual machine. The server guarantees that amount even when the
physical server is heavily loaded. The reservation is expressed in concrete units (megaher or megabytes).
For example, assume you have 2GHz available and specify a reservation of 1GHz for VM1 and 1GHz for
VM2. Now each virtual machine is guaranteed to get 1GHz if it needs it. However, if VM1 is using only
500MHz, VM2 can use 1.5GHz.
Reservation defaults to 0. You can specify a reservation if you need to guarantee that the minimum required
amounts of CPU or memory are always available for the virtual machine.
Resource Allocation Limit
Limit species an upper bound for CPU, memory, or storage I/O resources that can be allocated to a virtual
machine.
A server can allocate more than the reservation to a virtual machine, but never allocates more than the limit,
even if there are unused resources on the system. The limit is expressed in concrete units (megaher,
megabytes, or I/O operations per second).
CPU, memory, and storage I/O resource limits default to unlimited. When the memory limit is unlimited,
the amount of memory congured for the virtual machine when it was created becomes its eective limit.
vSphere Resource Management
12 VMware, Inc.