From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Aug 29 13:19:00 2014 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 792B2BE for ; Fri, 29 Aug 2014 13:19:00 +0000 (UTC) Received: from plane.gmane.org (plane.gmane.org [80.91.229.3]) (using TLSv1 with cipher AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (Client did not present a certificate) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 307691BE1 for ; Fri, 29 Aug 2014 13:18:59 +0000 (UTC) Received: from list by plane.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1XNM4s-00040V-Kz for freebsd-stable@freebsd.org; Fri, 29 Aug 2014 15:18:54 +0200 Received: from lara.cc.fer.hr ([161.53.72.113]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Fri, 29 Aug 2014 15:18:54 +0200 Received: from ivoras by lara.cc.fer.hr with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Fri, 29 Aug 2014 15:18:54 +0200 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org From: Ivan Voras Subject: Re: 10.0 interaction with vmware Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 15:18:32 +0200 Lines: 48 Message-ID: References: <20140826171657.0c79c54d@akips.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="IkhK9Lp3McvEtADMp4GfS50OlBgBd06X5" X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: lara.cc.fer.hr User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; FreeBSD amd64; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.0 In-Reply-To: <20140826171657.0c79c54d@akips.com> X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.18-1 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 13:19:00 -0000 This is an OpenPGP/MIME signed message (RFC 4880 and 3156) --IkhK9Lp3McvEtADMp4GfS50OlBgBd06X5 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 26/08/2014 09:16, Paul Koch wrote: > How does this work actually work ? Does it only take back what > FreeBSD considers to be "free" memory or can the host start taking > back "inactive", "wired", "zfs arc" memory ? We tend to rely on > stuff being in inactive and zfs arc. If we start swapping, we > are dead. Under memory pressure, VMWare's Balooning will cause internal FreeBSD's "memory low" triggers to fire, which will release ARC memory, which will probably degrade your performance. But from what I've seen, for some reason, it's pretty hard to actually see the VMWare host activate balooning, at least on FreeBSD servers. I've been using this combination for years and I only saw it once, for a trivial amount of memory. It's probably a last-resort measure. Also, VMWare will manage guest memory even without any guest software at all. It keeps track of recently active memory pages and may swap the unused ones out. FWIW, I think ZFS's crazy memory footprint makes it unsuitable for VMs (or actually most non-file-server workflows...), but I'm sure most people here will not agree with me :D If you have the opportunity to try it out in production, just run a regular UFS2+SU in your VM for a couple of days and see the difference. --IkhK9Lp3McvEtADMp4GfS50OlBgBd06X5 Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" Content-Description: OpenPGP digital signature Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iKYEARECAGYFAlQAfbJfFIAAAAAALgAoaXNzdWVyLWZwckBub3RhdGlvbnMub3Bl bnBncC5maWZ0aGhvcnNlbWFuLm5ldDYxNDE4MkQ3ODMwNDAwMDJFRUIzNDhFNUZE MDhENTA2M0RGRjFEMkMACgkQ/QjVBj3/HSzaIQCcDckkPKXpN1iAbWTiGdS612mb LtwAn0eeuMy0289AHgRXPMf6lCmVnA8p =UVu0 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --IkhK9Lp3McvEtADMp4GfS50OlBgBd06X5--