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Is Your VPS memory "ballooning" ?
The hypervisor can return the not used memory from your VPS to the host and share it for other users. But sometimes, especially on Windows it can slow down or crash the system, with unstable memory variation.
I experienced that, and resolved it, by uninstalling or disable it.
And now what's about debian, does it exist ?
lspci | grep balloon 00:03.0 Unclassified device [00ff]: Red Hat, Inc. Virtio memory balloon lsmod | grep balloon virtio_balloon 24576 0 virtio 20480 6 virtio_console,virtio_balloon,virtio_scsi,virtio_pci,virtio_blk,virtio_net virtio_ring 45056 6 virtio_console,virtio_balloon,virtio_scsi,virtio_pci,virtio_blk,virtio_net
You can disable it by removing the module
rmmod virtio_balloon
blacklisting it
echo 'blacklist virtio_balloon' >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf update-initramfs -u
or change the grub by adding at the beginning of the parameter on the right side of the equal sign in the original GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX, and add a space like that
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="virtio_balloon=0
before second quote and run
update-grub
Some providers can overbook the ram, you paid the ram, of course you perhaps want to share it.
Your choice !
- Do you care about ballooning ?36 votes
- NO52.78%
- YES but i do nothing19.44%
- YES and i change settings (if it's not locked)27.78%
Comments
I am generally kind, why reserve all the RAM when others can make use of it? Unless I really in need of the RAM or services that requires high performance, I see no point of removing ballooning.
That said I will refrain from using providers who oversold memory by too much. Either way VPS is shared resources and I am glad that we can pay peanuts for those peak performance when needed.
1) What system/os do you use ?
2) Does all your VPS from all your providers have ballooning ?
On my differents dedicated proxmox hosts i never activate it for the KVM/VPS, especially windows.
1) Usually Debian, but I do agree Windows feels smoother without ballooning
2) Didn't bother to check because it usually isn't the cause of slow performance
Love Debian too
oh i guess another thing to disable besides qemu-ga and cloud-init. if im paying monies for a specific amount of ram you best believe i want that ram to be assigned to me and not some other rando
I have a|my story for cloud-init to post soon
I will never trust preinstalled something.
On all the VPS i tried is always something as [ gift ], i always reinstall from clean iso debian|windows, even it's difficult.
windows does not support ballooning and always take the whole configed memory.
Ballooning can lead to random kernel crashes though.
I work on the assumption that every provider I use hasn't oversold memory. I can live with oversold CPU and shared iops, but having the hypervisor steal memory is too much. AFAIC, a host should always have RAM spare assuming every guest is using the full amount. If they don't have the RAM, they shouldn't sell it as RAM, simple as.
If a provider does oversell RAM and insists on guests supporting ballooning, it's an instant red flag that the server is going to have terrible and unpredictable latency hitches.
FWIW on the VDS I provide (for free) I've disabled ballooning completely, because in my eyes that's not VDS like and I also dislike it on a VPS but I'm afraid basically boiling down to "shared RAM" ~ "squeezing more users on a node" it's too alluring to quite a few providers ...
And of course on a VDS I strive for basically "slicing the dedi into pieces" and providing those, i.e. providing as true a "virtual small dedi" as any possible.
I originally answered 'no' but then I read some research so now I care about it
TDLR: Not much impact for just a regular website server (0~4%), big impact for a database server (18%).
Sample virtio_ballooning on/off gain on debian
Ram staying on my client before: 7.41%, after 25.69% (on a total from 6GB) and stay now always straight at idle
Can you smell the providers adding it to TOS that you aren't allowed to disable the module?
zap-hosting.
to be fair, after complaining like a kid, they ended up disabling it for me and now is an option in their panel. Since they made the right move (and I just idle VMs) I enabled it back cuz i don't care, just wanted to check (since I have a lifetime VPS) if I would be able to disable it if I wanted to.
Well shit. That seems like a legitimate interpretation of a clause that's probably in every TOS already.. even to me and I like to argue. TIL.
To be fair, either I'm dumb or I really haven't experienced ballooning with any other provider ever, zap was the first one I noticed it, mainly because they're actually kinda aggressive with it (you can get less than 50% of your total RAM at times)
This VM should have 8GB for example:
One ok is (for 6GB ram) :
free -h total utilisé libre partagé tamp/cache disponible Mem: 5,8Gi 431Mi 5,2Gi 508Ki 347Mi 5,4Gi Échange: 974Mi 0B 974Mi