Day 21, It’s Bruce again.  Tonight I am looking at Hyper-V Dynamic Memory.  We first introduced Dynamic Memory in 2008 R2.   Since then we have improved on the feature.  Below are some facts I discovered about Dynamic Memory during my studies tonight.

  • While the VM is running you can decrease the minimum memory
  • While the VM is running you can increase the maximum memory
  • A VM starting up requires more RAM than it does in its idle state.  We allow for this with a Startup RAM configuration
  • If you want a Static RAM amount set Startup, Minimum, and Maximum to same value.

Below are some links I used to study about Dynamic memory.  The white paper has a good section in it ( pages 44 to 47).

Hyper-V Dynamic Memory Overview

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831766.aspx

With the Dynamic Memory improvements for Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012, you can attain higher consolidation numbers with improved reliability for restart operations. This can lead to lower costs, especially in environments that have many idle or low-load virtual machines, such as pooled VDI environments. Dynamic Memory run-time configuration changes can reduce downtime and provide increased agility to respond to requirement changes.

Windows Server 2012 Server Virtualization (White paper)

http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/D/B/5DB1C7BF-6286-4431-A244-438D4605DB1D/WS%202012%20White%20Paper_Hyper-V.pdf