nyjz1298 wrote:
I've been seeing the same thing. The report recommended to size a Windows 2008 R2 Exchange server that isn't too busy at 160 MB or Ram. How could it come to that conclusion? For the 99% of us that build based on peaks this feature seems to be very poorly thought out.
The problem with some of these recommendations is you need to do a reality check. What is the VM for? Maybe avg usage over time is low, but some apps realisitically cannot function with only 1GB of RAM...
Like SQL server.
If SQL is running, and it may only need a little RAM a few hours a week, you can't install SQL in a 1GB VM realistically.. you may need that 16GB of RAM (maybe not all of it at once, but maybe the app needs or caching) at peak periods..
You have to track that memory usage in the VM and see what the PEAK RAM usage is.. and go from there. It generally does a good job but some apps require further investigation to validate if the RAM is not being used.
Cache isn't counted as "active" memory even though it may be high, so you have to check the cache usage in a Windows server as well. IT's in the physical memory tab as cached.. if that's high, and active memory is low.. that may be where the RAM is going, not necessarily ACTIVE used, which is what VMware is tracking