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Table Of Contents
Memory Virtualization Basics 5
Before you manage memory resources, you should understand how they are being virtualized and used
by ESXi.
The VMkernel manages all physical RAM on the host. The VMkernel dedicates part of this managed
physical RAM for its own use. The rest is available for use by virtual machines.
The virtual and physical memory space is divided into blocks called pages. When physical memory is full,
the data for virtual pages that are not present in physical memory are stored on disk. Depending on
processor architecture, pages are typically 4 KB or 2 MB. See Advanced Memory Attributes.
This chapter includes the following topics:
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Virtual Machine Memory
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Memory Overcommitment
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Memory Sharing
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Memory Virtualization
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Support for Large Page Sizes
Virtual Machine Memory
Each virtual machine consumes memory based on its configured size, plus additional overhead memory
for virtualization.
The configured size is the amount of memory that is presented to the guest operating system. This is
different from the amount of physical RAM that is allocated to the virtual machine. The latter depends on
the resource settings (shares, reservation, limit) and the level of memory pressure on the host.
VMware, Inc.
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