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VMware ESXi Administration Guide

Hugepages

Hugepages

See Backing Guest vRAM with 1GB Pages for the ESXi stance on hugepages.

The following summarizes points of interest:

A VM with 1 GB pages enabled must have full memory reservation. Otherwise, the VM cannot power on. All of the vRAM for VMs with 1 GB pages enabled is preallocated on power-on. Since these VMs have full memory reservation, memory reclamation does not affect them, and their memory consumption stays at the maximum level for the VM's entire lifetime.

1 GB page vRAM backing is opportunistic and 1 GB pages are allocated on a best effort basis. This includes cases where host CPUs do not have 1 GB capabilities. To maximize the chances of having guest vRAM backed with 1GB pages, starting VMs requiring 1 GB pages on a freshly booted host is recommended, because the host RAM is fragmented over time.

Note

FortiGate-VM benefits from 1 G hugepages, so it is assumed that the FortiGate-VM is the only VM running on a NUMA, or that the administrator can orchestrate the environment such that FortiGate-VM is granted 1 G hugepages.

Hugepages

See Backing Guest vRAM with 1GB Pages for the ESXi stance on hugepages.

The following summarizes points of interest:

A VM with 1 GB pages enabled must have full memory reservation. Otherwise, the VM cannot power on. All of the vRAM for VMs with 1 GB pages enabled is preallocated on power-on. Since these VMs have full memory reservation, memory reclamation does not affect them, and their memory consumption stays at the maximum level for the VM's entire lifetime.

1 GB page vRAM backing is opportunistic and 1 GB pages are allocated on a best effort basis. This includes cases where host CPUs do not have 1 GB capabilities. To maximize the chances of having guest vRAM backed with 1GB pages, starting VMs requiring 1 GB pages on a freshly booted host is recommended, because the host RAM is fragmented over time.

Note

FortiGate-VM benefits from 1 G hugepages, so it is assumed that the FortiGate-VM is the only VM running on a NUMA, or that the administrator can orchestrate the environment such that FortiGate-VM is granted 1 G hugepages.