Comment by nottorp
1 day ago
> Starting with 4 virtual cores and 8 GB vRAM, where the VM ran perfectly briskly with around 5 GB of memory used
But... if you start applications inside your VM it will want the full 8 Gb you've allocated not the 5 Gb it uses at startup?
I don’t assume that macOS virtualization is advanced enough to support memory ballooning, or is that not what you’re referring to?
Edit: I stand corrected!
I don't assume anything either, but a single Google search is enough to dispel that [1]
[1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization/vzv...
Not supported on macOS
macOS is generally pretty amazing at efficient memory usage and VM (virtual memory subsystem) handling. So even a 8GB machine can run pretty impressive workloads without having the user think the machine is underpowered.
Important caveat: that’s mostly the case for desktop workloads when you’re multitasking a lot, and not as much for server workloads where you actually need all memory.
Not really. Larger page sizes mean more potential for wasted memory and it has had a long standing memory leak in some core component to where even Calculator can cause an OOM event.
13 replies →
What will that help with if the host and guest combined need > physical ram?
If guest memory can be reclaimed, it doesn't need to be paged to disk once you hit RAM contention. It's mostly saving accounting overhead, but it'll have some effect on latency, which you're more likely to perceive under contention.
1 reply →