Hello,
in our organization, we've deployed 9 ESX servers hosting servers and workstations. Currently, we use the Virtual Infrastructure Client to monitor memory and CPU usage per VM. We make sure that our VM's are never constantly above 50% usage.
We are trying to formulate a policy for the setting of the pagefile on the VM's. I've browsed through the forum and found that most users advise to look at your VM as if it were a physical server or workstation and thus comply to Microsoft best practice; setting the pagefile to about 1.5x the physical RAM.
However, wouldn't using a pagingfile in fact be virtualizing virtual memory?
In a physical world, when Windows runs out of physical memory it swaps to the paging file, freeing up physical memory. In our virtual world, our VM's (according to our performance baseling) never run out of "physical" memory (when memory usage is constantly above 50% or peaks to often above 75%, we assign more memory to the VM). Wouldn't it therefore be a performance best practice to disable the pagefile, prohibiting Windows to try to swap to disk?
Further more, we're succesfully running a file server and an SQL server without the pagefile without any performance problems. Another advantage to killing the pagefile, is that it would free up a lot of disk space.
To sum things up: Is a pagefile really needed on VM's if your ESX server has enough physical memory to service all your VM's AND you're actively monitoring (and acting on) CPU and memory usage? And if so, is a pagefile needed for both servers AND workstations, or are some computer roles without a pagefile?
Thank you in advance.