Hyper-V Memory Test

This test reports how the Hyper-V host uses the physical memory resources available to it, and reveals whether adequate free memory is available on the host or not.

Target of the test : A Hyper-V server

Agent executing the test : An internal agent

Output of the test : One set of results for the Hyper-V host monitored

Configurable Parameters for the test
  1. Test period - How often should the test be executed
  2. Host - The host for which the test is to be configured.
  3. enable memory diagnosis - By default, this flag is set to No, indicating that detailed diagnosis will not be available for the Free memory measure reported by this test by default. If you want to view the detailed diagnosis of the Free memory measure - i.e., to view the top 10 processes on the Hyper-V host that are utilizing memory excessively - you can change this flag to Yes.

  4. DETAILED DIAGNOSIS - To make diagnosis more efficient and accurate, the eG Enterprise suite embeds an optional detailed diagnostic capability. With this capability, the eG agents can be configured to run detailed, more elaborate tests as and when specific problems are detected. To enable the detailed diagnosis capability of this test for a particular server, choose the On option. To disable the capability, click on the Off option.

     

    The option to selectively enable/disable the detailed diagnosis capability will be available only if the following conditions are fulfilled:

    • The eG manager license should allow the detailed diagnosis capability
    • Both the normal and abnormal frequencies configured for the detailed diagnosis measures should not be 0.

    The ability of this test to provide detailed diagnostic measures is governed by the enable memory diagnosis parameter only. This test therefore, disregards the status of the detailed diagnosis flag when determining whether/not to collect detailed metrics.

Measurements made by the test
Measurements Description Measurement Unit Interpretation

Run queue length

Indicates the instantaneous length of the queue in which threads are waiting for the processor cycle. This length does not include the threads that are currently being executed.

Number

A value consistently greater than 2 indicates that many processes could be simultaneously contending for the processor.

Number of blocked processes

Indicates the number of processes currently blocked for I/O, paging, etc.

Number

A high value could indicate an I/O problem on the host (e.g., a slow disk).

Swap memory

This measurement denotes the committed amount of virtual memory. This corresponds to the space reserved for virtual memory on disk paging file(s).

MB

An unusually high value for the swap usage can indicate a memory bottleneck. Check the memory utilization of individual processes to figure out the process(es) that has (have) maximum memory consumption and look to tune their memory usages and allocations accordingly.

Free memory

Indicates the free memory available currently.

MB

A very low value of free memory is also an indication of high memory utilization on a host. The detailed diagnosis of this measure lists the top 10 processes responsible for maximum memory consumption on the host.

Scan rate

Indicates the memory scan rate.

Pages/Sec

A high value is indicative of memory thrashing. Excessive thrashing can be detrimental to application performance.

The detailed diagnosis of the Free memory measure lists the top-10 memory-consuming processes on the Hyper-V host. Using this information, you can accurately identify the process that is causing the memory drain on the host.

DDfreememory-final

Figure 1 : The top 10 memory consumers on the Hyper-V host