The Memory Utilization page shows how much memory is being used by the ESX Server and how memory resources are allocated to virtual machines.
This chart shows the current allocation of physical memory on the server:
VMware ESX Server employs two distinct techniques for dynamically expanding or contracting the amount of memory allocated to virtual machines: a VMware-supplied VMMemCtl module that is loaded into the guest operating system running in a virtual machine, and a swapper process that swaps pages from a virtual machine to a server swap file without any involvement by the guest operating system.
The chart shows the current status of both the VMMemCtl modules and the swapper:
Many VMware ESX Server workloads present opportunities for sharing memory across virtual machines. For example, several virtual machines may be running instances of the same guest operating systems, have the same applications or components loaded, or contain common data.
In such cases, VMware ESX Server uses a proprietary transparent page sharing technique to securely eliminate redundant copies of memory pages. With memory sharing, a workload running as virtual machines often consumes less memory than it would when running on physical machines. As a result, higher levels of overcommitment can be supported efficiently.
The chart shows the current page sharing status:
For each running virtual machine, this chart shows a breakdown of the virtual machine's memory allocation. Memory is classified using the following categories:
To adjust the allocation of server memory to a virtual machine, click the Edit Resources link below the virtual machine name; this will take you to the resource editor, where you may increase or decrease the number of memory shares granted to the virtual machine.