Changing VM's RAM while it is running?

[rumble06]

So, I have 16GB of ram, 2 GPUs and I want to split the PC for me and my gf so she can use it while I use it.
I know how to do that, however, what I want to achieve is to be able to dinamically change allocated memory to my VM as I will use my VM most of the time while she is not gonna use it that often. So, 1GB of ram will be kept for the host (proxmox) and 14GB will be allocated to me while she is not using the computer. When she wants to use the computer, I will manually turn on her VM (that is not a problem), but when that happens I want to allocate her 7GB of ram and REALLOCATE my VM ram to 7GB instead of 14GB so we split it (the problem is that I'm not sure Windows Guest supports that and instead of starting to release RAM until it gets under 7GB it'll just crash) and that is probably the reason why the option requires a restart to change. Is there a way to achieve something similar?
The other idea I got was to use Ballooning and give them both a max ram of 14GB and a minimum of 2GB, which kinda results in memory overallocation but I think proxmox should take care of that and do not allow them to request more than available, however I'm worried that would still result in troubles like Windows guest trying infinitely to request more memory because it knows it can use up to 14GB.

 

[LnxBil]

Normally, RAM hotplugging is not enabled per default. To enable it, just have a look at options -> hotplug. Maybe is then does it online.

 

[rumble06]

Normally, RAM hotplugging is not enabled per default. To enable it, just have a look at options -> hotplug. Maybe is then does it online.

Oh thanks, didn't see that feature at all, will check it out, but seems that hotplugging works but hot unplugging not, well, still better than nothing but I'll still have to restart my VM after she's done with hers and I want to allocate the resources to mine. I also saw that ballooning has a command that you can type into the Monitor tab of the VM which is "balloon ammount", however I don't know if that refers to the minimum memory that VM will take or the maximum memory.

 

[spirit]

memory hot-unplug don't work correctly on any os currently(linux or windows). It's not a qemu bug, it's really a limitation in os.

If you want to cheat, you can use balloning, setting "shared" option to 0. It'll force the memory to minimum. (so you can up/down balloon between min/max)

 

[rumble06]

memory hot-unplug don't work correctly on any os currently(linux or windows). It's not a qemu bug, it's really a limitation in os.

If you want to cheat, you can use balloning, setting "shared" option to 0. It'll force the memory to minimum. (so you can up/down balloon between min/max)

Thanks, I think that's what I'll actually do. I will do some reasearch on the ballooning and the shared option first, then will try that.