6.7

Table Of Contents
System swap allows the system to reclaim memory from memory consumers that are not virtual
machines. When system swap is enabled you have a tradeoff between the impact of reclaiming the
memory from another process and the ability to assign the memory to a virtual machine that can use it.
The amount of space required for the system swap is 1GB.
Memory is reclaimed by taking data out of memory and writing it to background storage. Accessing the
data from background storage is slower than accessing data from memory, so it is important to carefully
select where to store the swapped data.
ESXi determines automatically where the system swap should be stored, this is the Preferred swap file
location. This decision can be aided by selecting a certain set of options. The system selects the best
possible enabled option. If none of the options are feasible then system swap is not activated.
The available options are:
n
Datastore - Allow the use of the datastore specified. Please note that a vSAN datastore or a VVol
datastore cannot be specified for system swap files.
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Host Swap Cache - Allow the use of part of the host swap cache.
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Preferred swap file location - Allow the use of the preferred swap file location configured for the host.
Configure System Swap
You can customize the options that determine the system swap location.
Prerequisites
Select the Enabled check box in the Edit System Swap Settings dialog box.
Procedure
1 Browse to the host in the vSphere Client.
2 Click Configure.
3 Under System, select System Swap.
4 Click Edit.
5 Select the check boxes for each option that you want to enable.
6 If you select the datastore option, select a datastore from the drop-down menu.
7 Click OK.
vSphere Resource Management
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