VMware has saved me a boatload of both time and money. When trying to figure out the memory utilization on the ESX host I have the other day, both my buddy and I wanted to pull our hair out because none of the numbers seemed to add up. We had the Microsoft Server 2oo3 Task Manager up and we were trying to compare the numbers to what was in the WMware Inftastructure Client and nothing seemed to match up exactly. What was found online, was found in bits and pieces and everything finally made sense, hours later. The result of all of the google searches, reading and head scratching is the image above and the information below. I hope it saves you time and your hair!
Memory Consumed =
Memory Granted – Memory Shared
Host memory usage – Memory Overhead
Memory usage % =
Memory Active / Memory Granted
Guest Memory Usage / Memory Granted
Windows Server Physical Memory (K) Total = Memory Granted to ESX VM
Windows Server Physical Memory (K) Available = Memory Shared
The difference of the two numbers above is equal to the Memory Consumed.
ESX Performance Graphs:
Memory Consumed (total amount used by guest; see Windows Task Mgr)
Memory Active (amount currently being used by guest)
Memory Usage (% of active memory relative to amount granted to guest)
Memory Shared (amount not currently used & available to share with others)
ESX VM Summary General:
Memory: amount configured (granted) for the VM
Memory Overhead: amount required by ESX for housekeeping the VM
ESX VM Summary Resources:
Host memory usage: amount the VM is using from the host
Guest memory usage: amount actively being used by the VM