Mastering VMware vSphere™ 4

10.2. Allocating Virtual Machine Memory

Let's start with a discussion of how memory is allocated to a virtual machine. Later in this section I'll discuss the mechanisms ESX/ESXi uses to arbitrate access to the memory under contention and what you as an administrator can do to change how virtual machines use the memory assigned to them.

When you create a new virtual machine through the vSphere Client, the wizard asks you how much memory the virtual machine should have, as shown in Figure 10.1. The vSphere Client suggests a default value based on the selected guest operating system.

The amount of memory you allocate on this screen is the amount the guest operating system will see—in this example, it is 1024MB. This is the same as when you build ...