Hypervisor -> Host Bleedover

[beers]

I noticed something interesting from my VMware container VPS today:

Memory information from dmidecode(8)
Maximum Memory Module Size: 32768 MB
Maximum Total Memory Size: 491520 MB
Maximum Capacity: 1 TB
Number Of Devices: 64

It looks like information from the host outside of what's allocated to the container is available information.

Are these usually abstracted similar to other hardware in the system, or is that a requirement for things like memory hot add?

 

[Cromewell]

I wonder if its something as simple as the virtual BIOS passing through the call. I would think that hot adding would just be a function of the virtual BIOS/hardware. Does WMware let you hot add memory? I know I can't do it on my ESXi hosted machines.

 

[beers]

I'm pretty sure it has that function, although my ESXi box has been out of commission for the last month otherwise I would test

Most hypervisors can do hot memory or a hot CPU add as a few guest OSes can do it.

 

[Cromewell]

I would figure most hypervisors should allow it if the guest does. But I know all I can hot add on my ESXi 5.5 guests are hard drives and PCI devices. My Windows Server and Linux installs all have it greyed out until I power off the guest.

I can find VMware KB articles for hot memory, so it must. Maybe it's licensed and I don't have the feature.