The maximum amount of memory that can be allocated to any single virtual machine created with VMware GSX Server depends upon host operating system, the host system’s configuration, the types of applications running on the host and the amount of memory on the host. VMware's experience has determined the following memory limits for a virtual machine:
The default amount of memory that is allocated to a new virtual machine created with VMware GSX Server depends upon
See Memory Use: Host Operating System and Virtual Machines for more information on how VMware GSX Server chooses the default amount of memory to allocate to virtual machines.
Depending upon the kinds of applications you are running in the virtual machine, the other virtual machines that contend with this virtual machine for memory resources and the applications you are running on the host operating system, you may want to change the amount of memory allocated to this virtual machine. You can change the memory size in the Configuration Editor.
To configure the memory for a virtual machine:
You can exceed this limit if you turn off the memory limit check, as described in Disabling memory checks for virtual machines. However, you should exceed the memory limit only if you are creating a virtual machine that you plan to deploy on another host computer with more memory, or you are aware of the actual memory used by the guest operating system and applications in the virtual machine.
Warning: When selecting the memory size, be careful not to assign too much memory to a virtual machine because it can adversely affect the performance of other applications on the host, including other virtual machines. For best performance, assign only as much memory as is recommended in the Memory configuration screen. In particular, host operating systems do not behave well when they run low on free memory.
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