This section describes the algorithms and settings used by ESXi to maximize application performance while still maintaining resource guarantees. Home Nodes and Initial Placement When a virtual machine is powered on, ESXi assigns it a home node. A virtual machine runs only on processors within its home node, and its newly allocated memory comes from the home node as well. Dynamic Load Balancing and Page Migration ESXi combines the traditional initial placement approach with a dynamic rebalancing algorithm. Periodically (every two seconds by default), the system examines the loads of the various nodes and determines if it should rebalance the load by moving a virtual machine from one node to another. Transparent Page Sharing Optimized for NUMAMany ESXi workloads present opportunities for sharing memory across virtual machines. Parent topic: Using NUMA Systems with ESXi