Remove vmware memory limits with Powershell

By On July 8, 2011 · 3 Comments

Using Memory Limits in vmware vSphere can cause severe performance issues. The guest operating system assumes it can use all of the allocated memory, but vSphere will make sure the vm cannot use more than the memory limit. It does this by inflating a memory balloon using the balloon driver included with the vmware tools. The performance chart in the vSphere Client will show the virtual machine is ballooning. I never recommend using memory limits in vmware.
The following script will remove all memory limits in your vSphere infrastructure, preventing the problems described above.

$vCenterServer = MyvCenterServer.domain.local #Enter your vCenter server FQDN here
 
#Connect to vCenter Server
$VC = Connect-VIServer $vCenterServer
 
#Gathering data
ForEach ($vm in get-vm)
{
	$vmView = $vm | get-view
 
	Write-Host "======"
	Write-Host "VM: $($vm.Name)"
	Write-Host "Current Limit: $($vmView.config.MemoryAllocation.Limit)"
 
	If ($vmView.config.MemoryAllocation.Limit -ne -1)
	{
		#Preparing modified data
		$spec = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualMachineConfigSpec
		$MemoryAllocation = New-Object VMware.Vim.ResourceAllocationInfo
		$MemoryAllocation.Limit = -1
		$spec.MemoryAllocation = $MemoryAllocation
 
		#Applying modification
		Write-Host "Removing Memory Limit"
		$vmView.ReconfigVM($spec)
 
		#Reloading data
		$vm = get-vm $vm.name
		$vmView = $vm | get-view
		Write-Host "Current Limit: $($vmView.config.MemoryAllocation.Limit)"
	}
 
	#Cleanup
	Clear-Variable vmView -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
}
 
#Disconnect
Disconnect-VIServer $vCenterServer -Confirm:$false

You can download the script here (rename to .ps1): Remove-MemoryLimits

Don’t forget to use PowerCLI to run the script, or add the PowerCLI snapin to your Powershell session (Add-PSSnapIn vmware*).

Enjoy!

»crosslinked«

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  4. Add Vmx Path to VI Client using Powershell
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3 Responses to Remove vmware memory limits with Powershell

  1. admin says:
    February 1, 2012 at 2:44 pm

    New in PowerCLI 5.0: this can be reduced to a simple oneliner:

    Get-VM | 
 Get-VMResourceConfiguration | 
 Set-VMResourceConfiguration -MemLimitMB $null
    Reply
  2. admin says:
    February 1, 2012 at 2:50 pm

    Or ever better:

    Get-VM|
 Get-VMResourceConfiguration |
 Where {$_.MemLimitMB -ne -1} |
 Set-VMResourceConfiguration -MemLimitMB $null
    Reply
  3. BrianK says:
    February 2, 2012 at 10:44 pm

    Great stuff and your update yesterday for PowerCLI 5.0 was quite timely! Just found a bunch of VMs in our environment that were erroneously configured with a memory limit. Some were in the tragic state of ballooning or even swapping needlessly since they were artificially starved. What could have quite possibly have taken hours to fix turned into a few minutes with this script. Thank you for sharing!

    Reply