You can specify the location of your guest swap file, reserve swap space when memory is overcommitted, and delete a swap file.

ESXi hosts use swapping to forcibly reclaim memory from a virtual machine when the vmmemctl driver is not available or is not responsive.

  • It was never installed.
  • It is explicitly deactivated.
  • It is not running (for example, while the guest operating system is booting).
  • It is temporarily unable to reclaim memory quickly enough to satisfy current system demands.
  • It is functioning properly, but maximum balloon size is reached.

Standard demand-paging techniques swap pages back in when the virtual machine needs them.