Windows Memory - VM Test
To understand the metrics reported by this test, it is essential to understand how memory is handled by the operating system. On any Windows system, memory is partitioned into a part that is available for user processes, and another that is available to the OS kernel. The kernel memory area is divided into several parts, with the two major parts (called “pools”) being a nonpaged pool and a paged pool. The nonpaged pool is a section of memory that cannot, under any circumstances, be paged to disk. The paged pool is a section of memory that can be paged to disk. (Just being stored in the paged pool doesn’t necessarily mean that something has been paged to disk. It just means that it has either been paged to disk or it could be paged to disk.) Sandwiched directly in between the nonpaged and paged pools (although technically part of the nonpaged pool) is a section of memory called the “System Page Table Entries,” or “System PTEs.” The Windows Memory - VM test tracks critical metrics corresponding to the System PTEs and the pool areas of kernel memory of a Windows virtual machine.
This test is disabled by default. To enable the test, go to the enable / disable tests page using the menu sequence : Agents -> Tests -> Enable/Disable, pick Nutanix Acropolis as the desired Component type, set Performance as the Test type, choose the test from the disabled tests list, and click on the < button to move the test to the ENABLED TESTS list. Finally, click the Update button.
Target of the test : A Nutanix Acropolis server
Agent deploying the test : A remote agent
Outputs of the test : One set of results for every Windows VM guest/user on the monitored Nutanix Acropolis server.
|
Measurement | Description | Measurement Unit | Interpretation |
---|---|---|---|
Free entries in system page table: |
Indicates the number of page table entries not currently in use by the guest. |
Number |
The maximum number of System PTEs that a server can have is set when the server boots. In heavily-used servers, you can run out of system PTEs. You can use the registry to increase the number of system PTEs, but that encroaches into the paged pool area, and you could run out of paged pool memory. Running out of either one is bad, and the goal should be to tune your server so that you run out of both at the exact same time. Typically, the value of this metric should be above 3000. |
Page read rate in VM: |
Indicates the average number of times per second the disk was read to resolve hard fault paging. |
Reads/Sec |
A hard page fault occurs when a program requests a data which is not in physical memory. In this case, the operating system finds the specific data on disk and restores it to the physical memory. By tracking the variations to this measure over time, you can keep tabs on hard page faults. |
Page write rate in VM: |
Indicates the average number of times per second the pages are written to disk to free up the physical memory. |
Writes/Sec |
|
Page input rate in VM: |
Indicates the number of times per second that a process needed to access a piece of memory that was not in its working set, meaning that the guest had to retrieve it from the page file. |
Pages/Sec |
|
Page output rate in VM: |
Indicates the number of times per second the guest decided to trim a process’s working set by writing some memory to disk in order to free up physical memory for another process. |
Pages/Sec |
This value is a critical measure of the memory utilization on a guest. If this value never increases, then there is sufficient memory in the guest. Instantaneous spikes of this value are acceptable, but if the value itself starts to rise over time or with load, it implies that there is a memory shortage on the guest. |
Memory pool non-paged data in VM: |
Indicates the total size of the kernel memory nonpaged pool. |
MB |
The kernel memory nonpage pool is an area of guest memory (that is, memory used by the guest operating system) for kernel objects that cannot be written to disk, but must remain in memory as long as the objects are allocated. Typically, there should be no more than 100 MB of non-paged pool memory being used. |
Memory pool paged data in VM : |
Indicates the total size of the Paged Pool. |
MB |
If the Paged Pool starts to run out of space (when it’s 80% full by default), the guest will automatically take some memory away from the System File Cache and give it to the Paged Pool. This makes the System File Cache smaller. However, the system file cache is critical, and so it will never reach zero. Hence, a significant increase in the paged pool size is a problem. This metric is a useful indicator of memory leaks in a guest. A memory leak occurs when the guest allocates more memory to a process than the process gives back to the pool. Any time of process can cause a memory leak. If the amount of paged pool data keeps increasing even though the workload on the guest remains constant, it is an indicator of a memory leak. |