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What is the definition of "Guest Memory %" ?

Question & Answer


Question

What is the definition of "Guest Memory %" ?

Answer

The Guest Mem % is active (i.e. recently used) memory by the VM.  Applying the math (guestMemUsage = activeMemory * 100 / VM memsize) where the VM in question is configured with 768MB RAM and Guest Mem % = 14%, then

768 * .14 = 107.52MB

Login to the service console, start esxtop, go to the memory panel and find the VM in the listing and find the "THCD" column (the esxtop equivalent to Guest Mem %) which shows working set size and you'll find the values match or are quite close to one another as the value will slightly fluctuate (~60 seconds or so).

So this is the percentage of the assigned memory for a VM which the VM is currently using as part of the working set of memory recognized by ESX.

Recently used memory is an estimate done based on a sampling of memory use and is not an absolute measurement.

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Document Information

Modified date:
28 January 2020

UID

isg3T1010914

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