Working with Virtual Machine Memory
We will begin with a discussion of how memory is allocated to a VM. Later, we will discuss how you can use reservations, shares, and limits to help control or modify how your VMs consume memory.
When you create a new VM in the vSphere Web Client, you are asked how much memory you would like to assign. The vSphere Web Client will suggest a default value based on the recommended configuration for the selected guest OS (the selected guest OS in this case is Microsoft Windows Server 2016 64-bit), as shown in Figure 11.2.
FIGURE 11.2 The memory configuration settings for a VM indicate the amount of memory the VM “thinks” it has.
The amount of memory you allocate is the amount the guest OS will see—in this example, 4,096 MB. This is the same as if you build a physical server and insert a set of four 1,024 MB DIMMs into the system board. When you install the Microsoft Windows Server 2016 guest OS onto this VM, the guest OS will report...
