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Table Of Contents
Administering Memory
Resources 6
Using the vSphere Client you can view information about and make changes to memory allocation
settings. To administer your memory resources effectively, you must also be familiar with memory
overhead, idle memory tax, and how ESXi hosts reclaim memory.
When administering memory resources, you can specify memory allocation. If you do not customize
memory allocation, the ESXi host uses defaults that work well in most situations.
You can specify memory allocation in several ways.
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Use the attributes and special features available through the vSphere Client. The vSphere Client
allows you to connect to the ESXi host or vCenter Server system.
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Use advanced settings.
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Use the vSphere SDK for scripted memory allocation.
Note In this chapter, "Memory" can refer to physical RAM or Persistent Memory.
This chapter includes the following topics:
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Understanding Memory Overhead
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How ESXi Hosts Allocate Memory
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Memory Reclamation
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Using Swap Files
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Sharing Memory Across Virtual Machines
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Memory Compression
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Measuring and Differentiating Types of Memory Usage
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Memory Reliability
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About System Swap
Understanding Memory Overhead
Virtualization of memory resources has some associated overhead.
VMware, Inc.
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