Question

Difficulty: EasyVirtual Machine Resource Requirements and Hardware Support

A system administrator is configuring a hypervisor host that will run 4 identical virtual machines. Each virtual machine requires 4 GB of RAM to function properly. Additionally, the host hypervisor requires a minimum of 4 GB of dedicated host RAM for its own operation. What is the minimum total amount of host RAM, in gigabytes (GB), required to support this configuration?

Answer: 20 GB

Answer

The minimum total host RAM required is 20 GB.

The total host memory calculation must include both the RAM allocated to all guest virtual machines (

4 \times 4 \text{ GB} = 16 \text{ GB}

) and the memory reserved for the host OS/hypervisor (

4 \text{ GB}

), resulting in a total of

20 \text{ GB}

.

Step-by-Step Solution

1

Calculate total memory required for guest virtual machines

16 GB

Multiplying the 4 virtual machines by 4 GB of RAM per machine yields 16 GB total for guest workloads.

2

Add host hypervisor RAM overhead requirement

20 GB

The hypervisor itself requires 4 GB of system RAM to manage system resources and prevent host memory swapping.

Key Concept

Host RAM sizing and hypervisor overhead allocation

Rate this question

Topics

Virtual Machine Resource Requirements and Hardware Support

More questions from this topic