I have 10 VM's and have allocated each 2048 MB through 'Edit Settings...'. I had assumed that this means, that the maximum amount of memory that the VM will draw is 2048 MB, but if the VM requires less, then it will only take what it needs?
Whilst running tests on these VM's and leaving them to idle without programs running, my setup doesn't seem to be doing this. When I first boot a VM (they're all Win 7), the Consumed, Host Memory will start from 0 but slowly increase until it hits the 2048 MB mark. The Active, Guest Memory will start off around the 1.70 GB mark (I assume this 'Guest Memory' is the true amount of memory that the computer is requiring at this time), but gradually after 15 mins or so of running, it work's its way down to the 400MB mark. At that rate, if the general RAM required to run ESXi is 1.2GB and this machine is only requiring 400MB, then the total RAM use on the Host should be 1.6GB, however, the host is saying that 3.2GB is being used (1.2GB + 2GB Consumed = 3.2GB.
I have 16GB of RAM on the host, but if I wanted to run 10 VM's, the system would require 21.2GB (1.2GB for ESXi + (10 VM's x 2GB)) = 21.2GB. It should only require 5.2GB once all machines have settled shouldn't it (1.2GB for ESXi + (10 VM's x 400MB)) = 5.2GB ?