Maximum memory that can be assigned to a VM

[William_K]

I am installing Windows Server 2019 on our new server with ESXi 7. Because there will only ever be one VM on this server, I want to assign the maximum resources available.

For example, use whatever disk space is available and whatever ram is available. I have sorted disk space, but when assigning maximum memory I get an error about exceeding the memory that has been assigned. When I searched this, I found a lot of reference to minimum allowance, which may be useful for hosting many VMs, but how do I assign more ram than 4 GB?

I have a brand new server with 64 GB of ram and want to assign as much of that as possible after leaving some for the host machine.

But how can I do that?

[fabio1975]

Ciao 

Do you see the problem you highlighted when you power on the VM?

How much free space on the datastore where you have allocated the VM have you left?

It is necessary to leave some free space for any SNAPSHOTs, Logs file  and the swap file

[William_K]

Thanks, but this wasn't about space. It was about memory and I got past that.

I had 64 GB of ram so by leaving 4 GB for the host machine, I was able to assign 60 GB to the VM.

[fabio1975]

Ciao 

A VM with 60GB of RAM also requires 60GB of additional disk space for the SWAP file on the datastore where the VM resides.

So if you allocate 60GB of RAM but don't have at least 70-80GB of disk space free, the VM won't start.
This is why I was wondering how much disk space you have free on the datastore.

[William_K]

It has been restarting so far with 20 GB of unused space.

[fabio1975]

Ciao 

I'm happy that you solved it

[Scott Vessey]

Why 1 big VM and not just install Windows on the tin? What’s your use case?

 

[William_K]

Because I can always log in via ESXi regardless of the Windows Server status.