Issues with RAM in VM

[cabling]

Hello,
I have a node with 64 GB of RAM. I created a VM with Windows 2012 Server and I assigned 16 GB of RAM.
The problem is always the usage of RAM is around 90% in the VM summary
But when I go to the VM and i see the task manager the usage of RAM is around 7-8%
The problem persist even when i add more RAM to the VM.
What could be the problem?
Thanks.

 

[adamb]

Hello,
I have a node with 64 GB of RAM. I created a VM with Windows 2012 Server and I assigned 16 GB of RAM.
The problem is always the usage of RAM is around 90% in the VM summary
But when I go to the VM and i see the task manager the usage of RAM is around 7-8%
The problem persist even when i add more RAM to the VM.
What could be the problem?
Thanks.

There is no problem. When windows boots, it takes all the ram, so the usage from the host is expected.

 

[cabling]

There is no problem. When windows boots, it takes all the ram, so the usage from the host is expected.

Yes I know that but the usage keep going even with the windows is running normally, and as I said, in the task manager from windows i see only 7-8 % of RAM usage

 

[adamb]

Yes I know that but the usage keep going even with the windows is running normally, and as I said, in the task manager from windows i see only 7-8 % of RAM usage

I am not sure how else to say this is expected. From the host side the usage will be 90-100%, on the VM the usage will be low unless its active and has been running for awhile.

 

[Yvan Watchman]

Windows always reserves ram.

 

[Republicus]

The balloon driver and service is known to have some issues in guest OSs, others it works great. I experienced the problem first hand with a Windows 10 guest that I was using for passthrough. Once I disabled the memory ballooning my guest worked fine.

But I wanted to see the memory on the host side match like it did with the ballooning.

You can try:

(1) Enable balloon on your guest VM's memory and set the minimum memory equal to your maximum amount of memory, both to 16GB.

(2) Install the memory balloon driver and service.


By doing that your host will use the balloon service to report the actual guest ram usage but still behave as though ballooning is not being used in cases where the guest OS does not behave well with ballooning. It's worked for me.