With VMware ESXi 5, VMware made changes to the licensing models that affect the usable amount of RAM.
What Changed?
The free version of VMware ESXi 5 (vSphere Hypervisor) limits usable physical RAM to 32 GB. In ESXi 4, this limitation did not exist — up to 256 GB of RAM could be used.
Impact
If your server has more than 32 GB of RAM and you are using the free ESXi 5 license, the excess memory will not be used. VMs can be assigned a total of no more than 32 GB of RAM.
Solutions
- vSphere Essentials license: Removes the RAM limit. Cost-effective license for small environments.
- Stay on ESXi 4: If an upgrade to ESXi 5 is not required, you can remain on version 4.
- Alternative hypervisors: KVM or Xen have no artificial RAM limits.
Our Recommendation
For customers running virtualization on dedicated servers with large amounts of RAM, we recommend using KVM. The open-source hypervisor has no licensing costs and no artificial limitations.
Contact us at info@ingate.de for advice on the optimal virtualization solution.
