Ambiguity over resource allocation recommended by Oversized VM's Report

[hadjer.yahiaoui]

Case ID : 03545287

When I launch the Oversized Virtual Machines by Memory report is shows the VM's Memory usage as very low and recommend I dramatically decrease memory.

the values ​​indicated by the machine and that indicated by VeaamOne are not the same, for example one of the VMs is monitored (during one week) as follows (memory allocated on Vmware 30 GB):

From VeeamONE Oversize VM Report:
- Consomed memory usage (14.88 GB)
- Active memory usage (3.78)

From the VM (task manager):
- Memory In Use (8.2 GB)
- Memory Standby (3.3 GB)
- Free Memory (18.2 GB)

From VeeamONE VM performance report:
- Active Memory Enrage (3.04 GB)
- Balloon Memory (0 GB)
- Cosumed Memory Firing (15.4 GB)

My question is: do the statistics "active memory" or "memory usage" really represent what the VM actually uses and what is the difference between Memory usage, Active memory and consumed memory compared to the real value indicated by the VM ( task manager).
PS: there was an event where a user of a SharePoint VM found a slowness of respite at the server, when we examined the statistics of the RAM during the last hours, the Task Manager indicated that the memory usage was at 97% by cons VeeamOne indicated that the use (active memory) does not exceed the 50%, by increasing the RAM the problem has disappeared. how can you explain this incident?

Thank you in advance for your help.

Cordially.

[Shestakov]

Hello Hadjer,
Memory Usage counter is calculated by dividing VM Memory Active by VM Memory Granted.
Active memory counter shows the number of memory pages that have been recently accessed by the application, without taking into consideration pages that have been pre-allocated/reserved by the application, but not currently used.
It's up to you to decide which counter fits better. You can find related discussions here and here.

there was an event where a user of a SharePoint VM found a slowness of respite at the server, when we examined the statistics of the RAM during the last hours, the Task Manager indicated that the memory usage was at 97% by cons VeeamOne indicated that the use (active memory) does not exceed the 50%, by increasing the RAM the problem has disappeared. how can you explain this incident?

Not sure what was the real reason, support can make a deeper observation, but from my experience it happens when you see the performance spike in real-time monitor and compare it with Veeam ONE results in several days when it became historical data and was aggregated. Veeam ONE collects 20-second samples from ESXi and shows it during the day or so(depends on the settings), then it aggregates 20-second values to 5-minutes intervals and shows the average value and so on up to 2-hour averages.. If that's not your case, it worth checking with the support team.

[hadjer.yahiaoui]

Hello Shestakov,

Thank you for your answer, I can now distinguish between the two Memory counters.
I also wish to please clarify the points below.

- Does the memory displayed by the Windows task manager correspond to the consume memory of Vmware?

- Can Veeam One's "Oversized VMs" recommendations be applied despite the fact that the memory consumption indicated by the VM (Task Manager) is much greater?

- What recommendations are to be applied for this report? by "consumed Memory" or "Active Memory"?

Thank you in advance.

Cordially.
Hadjer YH

[Shestakov]

- Does the memory displayed by the Windows task manager correspond to the consume memory of Vmware?
- Yes

- Can Veeam One's "Oversized VMs" recommendations be applied despite the fact that the memory consumption indicated by the VM (Task Manager) is much greater?
- Well, if you feel that recommendations are too aggressive, try to decrease size of VMs gradually. You can also observe performance of VMs in question in Veeam ONE Monitor to make sure the VM is oversized.

- What recommendations are to be applied for this report? by "consumed Memory" or "Active Memory"?
- We recommend to use Memory Active metrics. For example, SQL Server VM will always report on 100% consumed memory, while only 20-30% might be actually actively used.