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ESX "Real Memory"

I've searched in several places, but cannot find what "Real Memory" is.  On my ESX servers (which have 16GB of memory), this value reports at 500MB and 90% consumed.  I have 512MB allocated to the service console, but that's the closest guess I've got.  There's another thread on here that reports "real memory" is the amount of RAM you have installed.  For me, it's either not reporting correctly or that's not the correct value of "real memory".

Thanks! 

  • I am seeing the same thing here. However mine fluctuates between 75-95 %. My guess is that this is the Service console memory. However I would like confirmation of this.

  •  The service console that you configured SNMP on is actually a hidden virtual machine that ESX allocates 512MB of memory to and starts automatically when an ESX host starts up. That is where the 512MB of memory is coming from.

  • The larger problem is comparing counters in Orion to those found in virtual center.  Virtual Center has a counter that is called Active Memory, this appears to be the same as the Real Memory Counter, but niether of these are even close to the total memory used.  Also, Memory Size (in Orion) appears to be the same as Memory Granted (in Virtual Center).  I have been looking closer at the VM Memory Consuption chart in Orion, and when I look at the raw data, it doesn't tell me what measurment it is using.  So it is hard to do the math to account for all the memory on a given host. 


  • So I posted in another thread that I believe that the "Real Memory" is the memory being used by the VMware linux kernel itself.  Both from an allocation and usage perspective.  This was based on my interpretation of the data given and the usage calculation that the VMs are using themselves. 


    On our ESX server in our lab, we have 8 GB of RAM.  We have 10 VMs running.  Orion and the VM IC both show the memory utilization for the VMs.  The IC also shows a total memory utilization for the entire system.  The SUM of what the VMs are using plus the Real Memory add up to the total utilization on our system.  Thus my conclusion that the Real Memory must be what the ESX server is using itself.


    However, we have sent a request in the VMware to get an answer from their engineering, and I will update this thread when we receive that answer.


    Thanks

  • Hi guys,


    Straight from a VMware engineer: The SNMP agent is not reporting the size of real memory but instead the size of  memory that the Linux kernel is allowed to see.


    Thanks



  • The larger problem is comparing counters in Orion to those found in virtual center.  Virtual Center has a counter that is called Active Memory, this appears to be the same as the Real Memory Counter, but niether of these are even close to the total memory used. 

    A customer provided the attached word document that compares the two in case you might be interested.
    VMWare Memory.doc