Comments on: How do you test a balloon memory driver?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 12 Apr 2014 08:05:27 +0000

Hello again :) I’ve tried lastest image under KVM and I didn’t see any difference with or without balloon memory. I think it’s because of lack of any memory usage in virtual machine.

By: Will Backman

Will Backman — Sat, 12 Apr 2014 01:41:54 +0000

I think you need to do things on the virtual machines that cause them to use up a lot of RAM, and then stop doing those things. Then fire up more virtual machines that need some more RAM and see if vmware can use the balloon driver to reclaim some RAM from the first set of virtual machines with the driver installed.
That was a long sentence.
Essentially VMWare can “inflate” the ballon driver inside a VM to make sure some RAM isn’t used by something else. Then reclaim that RAM.

By: Justin Sherrill

Justin Sherrill — Wed, 09 Apr 2014 19:01:22 +0000

I did it under VMWare Server 5.1 – used Veeam to watch the RAM usage, which didn’t seem to show any RAM-related differences.

By: Vitaly

Vitaly — Wed, 09 Apr 2014 18:35:51 +0000

Hello, Justin! Did you try to test it under KVM?