i was wondering if the virtual machine managers memory settings "current allocation" and "maximum allocation" can be used for ballooning? Atm i have current 4096 and maximum 4096 configured. i would like to use ballooning to support more vms at the same time.
I would like to give the vm 2048 at least and 6144 max memory. The question is current = 2048 and 6144 max correct? And would the vm "see" always 6144 memory?
The guest machine needs to have the memory ballooning support installed. For Linux guests this is included automatically.
The client will always see the maximum memory allocated for it, but the ballooning device might reserve some of that memory. In you example the client might see 6144 MiB of memory and the ballooning device allocates 4096 MiB of that. The memory that the ballooning device has allocated is released to be used by the host operating system.
As far as the guest operating system is concerned, the memory ballooning device is just a process that steals some memory for its own use.