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We have a 3 node Hyper-V cluster with each server having 96GB RAM and 2 73GB disks in a RAID 1 for the host machine OS (2008 R2). The last thing we want to happen is for the host to expand the pagefile.sys and consume the entire C drive. It is currently a little over 16GB. What would be the recommendation for setting the min and max pagefile.sys size?

Note: This is for the hosts, not the guests. 96GB RAM and 73GB C drive.

Don't think it matters but just in case. All three host machines have dual 1 Gbps Ethernet connections to an iSCSI SAN using the Broadcom iSCSI offload engine, multipathed. They are Dell R610 servers running 2008 R2 Datacenter with Hyper-V.

murisonc
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2 Answers2

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It's not as cut and dry as you might think, but the following MS Support article lays it out pretty well:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2021748

joeqwerty
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  • Oh god - with the awesome statement "If you have enough RAM installed in your computer, you may not require a page file at all, unless one is required by a specific application." Really, MS? – mfinni Apr 24 '12 at 21:12
  • Wow...that looks painful but it is exactly what I need. – murisonc Apr 25 '12 at 17:12
  • Glad to help... – joeqwerty Apr 25 '12 at 21:14
  • Isn't one of the requirements for hyper-v that you never overallocate memory? VM memory space should never swap out. Your ram should be sized to accomodate at least 100% of the client machines memory needs (this gets a bit complicated by R2). By Implication the pagefile will never get used other than by the host system itself and so it should only need 2Gb or so for the hosts own process swapping needs - which ideally it should also never do. Anyone with better knowledge of the subject know why you would need page file reserved for the memory space occupied by a vm client? – Ian Murphy Apr 26 '12 at 11:14
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Up front, I'm more familiar with VMware than Hyper-V. That being said, best practice in a virtual environment is generally to set the pagefile at a fixed size - min and max the same - at about 150% of the RAM allocation. Then you know exactly how big it will be, and in a virtual environment (particularly with thin-provisioned disks), this keeps the pagefile from eating up space that doesn't get recovered when it doesn't need it all.

Jes
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