Incorrect memory utlization for 1 VM Web Client 6.5

Misan

Misan

Misan

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Manchester
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.

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Any ideas?
 
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Isn't this down to the increased footprint of ESXi now it has the intergrated HTML web interface. On such tiny hosts (sub 64GB) of ram I'd be looking to disable it... not used 6.5 mind so may not be it but there's definately a higher ram usage by core processes irrespective of VM load.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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?
 
Yes it should although one of my vms with direct access has all memory allocated and its not complaining of memory use in vcsa 6.0, haven't updated to 6.5 yet to see.
 
ecksmen said:
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?
Click to expand...

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.
 
Right so installed a new Vcenter 6.5 on to one of my hosts yesterday. I have an Xpenology installation with 2 LSI 9211-8is passed through to pick up 12 drive bays from the 16 in the chassis. On 6.0, with direct access and full memory reservation, there where no memory warnings about utilisation, but with 6.5 this warning has come up, so same as you Misan.

Very strange behaviour compared to the other versions!
 
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!
 
The flash client sucks to be honest, has for a while. The c# was effective and easy, but relied on being installed.

I like the host HTML5 UI with its pop up VM window, but the current Vcenter HTML5 version doesn't seem as easy to use yet, I'm hoping they bring this in and drop the new tab version.
 
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