Recommended VM memory configurations

[bradluettke]

Good morning,

Is anyone aware of any official VMware documentation on recommended memory configurations for a VM? So this isn't to do with sizing an initial VM, but which memory confiigurations are recommended (or not recommended) when you want to give more memory to a VM (ie, a VM has 8GB memory and it needs more, but you don't necessary want to double up to 16GB, so which increments can you go up inbetween these? 9GB, 10GB, 12GB etc?).

Thanks

[jrmunday]

The basic principle of only granting what is actually required should always apply, but you should also take note of the NUMA architecture. Try and fit the CPU/memory into a single node for performance. If you run esxtop, you can add the NUMA counters into the memory view and check to see how your memory is distributed ... try and achieve 100% NUMA local memory if possible.

Cheers,

Jon

[OscarDavey]

The actual memory size you should give to a virtual machine depends on a few practical considerations:

• What kinds of applications will run in the virtual machine

• What other virtual machines will contend with this virtual machine for memory resources

• What applications will run on the host at the same time as the virtual machine

There is not a fixed rule on the amount of RAM you assign for exclusive use by a virtual machine. However there are two points you need to take care of:

• assign enough RAM for the guest OS to run smoothly (> 512 MB for 64-bit Ubuntu)
• leave enough RAM for the host OS including host applications (> 2 GB for 64-bit Windows 7)

Hope that answered your question

Best regards

Yours, Oscar

[gabinun]

You need to have some considerations, but there is not any VMware documentation on recommended memory configurations for a VM. You may have to use the common sense.

Its depends of the OS and de applications running in the VM.

I recommend to use as less as possible.