Incorrect memory utlization for 1 VM Web Client 6.5

[Misan]

Hi - After upgrading my host to ESXi 6.5 and VCSA to 6.5 I have found that one of my VM's shows all memory being utilized in the summary screen and when checking the performance chart for percentage used it displays 100% (This is not the case when checking task manager in Windows)

Consequently the vSphere web client complains about memory usage for this VM.

I have 20+ other VM's on 2012 R2 that are not experiencing this problem. The only difference I can see is that this particular VM has passthrough enabled for the LSI card.

The VM has no reservation set and the limit is set to 'unlimited'. The VM in question runs Server 2012 R2 with an LSI 9260-8i passthrough.

Latest VMware Tools is installed.

I have rebooted the VCSA, the host and the VM.

This issue was not present on ESXi 6.

Any ideas?

 

[Misan]

My understanding is that the traditional desktop client is more or less phased out now - meaning the two options for management are the Flash client and HTML5 rather stripped down option.

The host has 128GB RAM, and other VM's are not showing this issue. I'm guessing this might be the first bug I've encountered so far if it doesn't point to some obscure configuration issue.

 

[Misan]

Yup

 

[Misan]

Good call - Just checked the HTML5 client and the summary and performance graphs show the same data.

I'm starting to wonder if this is some bug related to the LSI 9260-8i being configured as passthrough which seems to only affect ESXi 6.5 and/or VCSA 6.5...

I've turned off alarms for the VM in question - as vCenter is nagging me with memory usage alerts.

Odd one to figure out.

 

[Misan]

RAMMap shows total active just over 1.5GB out of a total of 8GB.

Do you think it's worth updating the LSI 9260-8i Server 2012 R2 drivers? - The current ones are fine (and were perfectly fine under ESXi 6), but wondered if that's a possible issue.

P.S - The 9260-8i has the latest firmware installed also.

Other than that I'm guessing this is something hypervisor related on ESXi 6.5.

 

[Misan]

Sorry I totally miss read the original post, isn't it required that if you use directaccess that you reserve all the memory for the VM - so this VM should have an 8GB memory reservation?

This is correct - The VM will throw a warning when powering on if a reservation that matches the guest has not been configured.

BlizzardX - Yep, same for me. Just since upgrading to ESXi 6.5 and my VCSA has this issue cropped up. I've posted on the VMWare forums, however no one seems to know what could be causing this. I'm betting on this being my first bug encounter on 6.5! I've turned off memory usage alerts for this VM until a solution/patch is out.

If anyone upgrades ESXi and VCSA to 6.5 I'd be interested to see if you experience the same issue when using a PCI passthrough device.

 

[Misan]

I'll keep an eye out on the VMware forums to see if anyone has a solution.

I'm betting on us both encountering our first bug in 6.5 - Can't say I'm fully sold on the requirement for the flash client as it's not exactly quick vs the old C# client.

Hopefully the HTML5 client will see some future updates which will bring it into parity with the flash one!