Most of them are outdated, but provide historical design context.
They are not user documentation and should not be treated as such.
Documentation is available here.
Maximum memory size
Owner
- Name: Jakub Niedermertl (jniederm)
- Email: jniederm@redhat.com
Summary
All VM-like entities (VMs, templates, pools, instance types) have new attribute ‘maximum memory’ corresponding to
libvirt’s maxMemory (libvirt documentation). It sets upper bound up to which memory hot-plug can be performed.
Engine
Maximum memory value is stored in VmBase.maxMemorySizeMb property. It is validated against range
[memory of VM, *MaxMemorySizeInMB], where *MaxMemorySizeInMB is one of VM32BitMaxMemorySizeInMB,
VM64BitMaxMemorySizeInMB and VMPpc64BitMaxMemorySizeInMB configuration options depending on selected operating
system of the VM. Default value in webadmin UI is 4x size of memory.
During migration of engine 4.0 -> 4.1 all VM-like entities will get max memory = 4x memory.
If a VM (or template) is imported (from export domain, snapshot, external system) and doesn’t have max memory set yet,
the maximum value of max memory is set (*MaxMemorySizeInMB config options).
Database
Maximum memory is stored in column vm_static.max_memory_size_mb.
REST API
Maximum memory is available in tag VM-like entity/memory_policy/max. E.g.
GET ovirt-engine/api/vms/{vmId}
<vm id="...">
...
<memory_policy>
<max>4398046511104</max>
...
</memory_policy>
...
</vm>
Note on size of maximum memory
If memory hot-plug is not required, max memory can be set to be the same as VM memory. Suggested value is 4x size of VM memory. Larger max memory is discouraged because:
- I can make QEMU process to start for longer time.
- If hot plugged memory is also required to be hot unpluggable, it needs to be considered as movable by the guest kernel. Kernel requires the amount of movable memory to be at most 4x larger that non-movable memory for stable run.
- On PowerPC platform continuous block of non-movable memory of size 1/64 of the max memory needs to be allocated for each VM.