VMWare ESX 3.0.1 vswp file...

[muzscman]

VM is a Windows 2k3 64 bit Enterprise edition. 16 gigs of ram, quad cpu's, 20 gig of HD space.

On any other VM I have, regardless of ram size, the vswp is about 1 gig of HD space on the SAN. For some reason this new VM has a 16 gig swap file....which obviously cuts into my SAN space:

16G May 21 08:29 pvm_db1-d8615990.vswp

I have multiple VM's with 8 gigs of Ram and they only have a 1 gig vswp file....so why is this new VM taking up 16 gigs of swap?

Thanks in advance.

[Dave_Mishchenko]

When you create a VM the memory reservation setting is set to 0 so by default ESX with create a vswp file for the VM that is equal to the amount of memory that you have assigned to the VM. Your 8 GB VMs will likely have a 7 GB memory reservation as ESX will substract the size of the reservation from the memory assigned to the VM when determining the vswp file size (i.e. 8 GB ram for the VM - 7 GB memory reservation = 1 GB vswp).

You can also use the sched.swap.dir parameter to place your vswp file on another datastore.

[muzscman]

So shouldn't there be a 1gig vswp file for these vm's instead of a 16 gig vswp file??

Is there a way to change that so it doesn't create a 16 gig vswp file?

[Dave_Mishchenko · Accepted solution]

You would want to edit the settings for the VM and then go to Resources tab and select Memory. Then increase the Reservation setting. Every GB you add to the Reservation will reduce the swap file by a GB. Beware though that a large memory reservation like this could negatively impact your other VMs. Here's a link to the resources guide which covers this - http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35/esx_3/r35/vi3_35_25_resource_mgmt.pdf.

[muzscman]

Thank you very much.