(The Hosting News) – VKernel, the award-winning provider of enterprise-class performance and capacity management products for virtualized data centers and cloud environments, announced today a key resource to assist VMware customers in determining proper vRAM (VM memory) sizing. Outlined in a new white paper, “VM Memory (vRAM) Sizing Considerations,” by vExpert David Davis of VMwareVideos.com, virtualization administrators can learn how to use VMware memory metrics to determine the proper vRAM allocation for a virtual machine. This new white paper comes on the heels of VMware’s recently announced licensing change for vSphere 5, whereby licensing is determined by pooled vRAM allocations. This VMware licensing shift makes proper vRAM sizing essential for many customers to avoid purchasing additional vSphere licenses. For further assistance in VM memory sizing, VKernel’s vOPSTM Optimizer can calculate proper vRAM allocations using methods similar to those explained in this white paper, and can automatically implement these VM memory sizing changes.

Memory is typically the most constrained computing resource in a virtualized data center. Determining how much memory to allocate for a VM can be complicated as a variety of VM performance metrics must be analyzed, some vCenter settings can vastly affect how VM memory responds, and different memory usage results are reported at the guest and hypervisor level. Yet, determining an accurate virtual memory allocation is critical as setting too little vRAM can impact application performance and allocating too much will increase costs.

VKernel’s new white paper, “VM Memory (vRAM) Sizing Considerations,” explains which VMware metrics must be analyzed, how to interpret the results, and outlines a vRAM sizing process for both new and existing VMs. For virtualization administrators that want to put the concepts described in the white paper into action, VKernel vOPS Optimizer automatically analyzes the metrics described in the white paper to determine proper VM memory sizing.

“The new vRAM -based licensing structure for VMware’s vSphere 5 makes capacity management for virtual memory more important for many customers,” said Bryan Semple, Chief Marketing Officer at VKernel. “VMware administrators will need to minimize vRAM over allocation to increase the number of VMs they can put on a physical server for a given vSphere license cost. This new white paper instructs VM administrators on how to undertake this vRAM sizing process.”

VKernel’s “VM Memory (vRAM) Sizing Considerations” white paper is available at http://www.vkernel.com/resources/whitepapers/vm-memory-vram-sizing-considerations. A free 30-day trial of vOPS Optimizer—which analyzes actual virtual machine utilization and VM performance metrics to properly size VM resource allocations—can be downloaded from http://www.vkernel.com/products/optimizer/overview.

About VKernel

VKernel is the number one provider of capacity management products for virtualized data centers and cloud environments. The company’s powerful, easy-to-use and affordable products simplify the complex and critical tasks of planning, monitoring and predicting capacity utilization and bottlenecks. Used by over 50,000 system administrators, the products have proven their ability to maximize capacity utilization, reduce virtualization costs and improve application performance.

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