Allocating Dynamic memory in Windows was not as easy as it is today. It was a more of a controversial topic to tackle Dynamic Memory in Windows
When any computer assigns a certain fragment of memory to a virtual machine, that memory is taken from RAM and allocation is done accordingly. This is where the problems related to memory allocation spring up in almost all editions of Windows.
The concept of Dynamic Memory in Windows was introduced with Windows Server 2008 R2 edition. As we discussed above, this works on a virtual machine. The memory allocated to the virtual machine can vary according to the demand and the amount of workload. However, one important thing is that Windows 2008 memory allocation is a static process. For example, if we assign 2GB memory to the virtual machine, then it will use exact 2GB of memory. If not all the memory is used, then the remaining memory will be wasted. The allotted space cannot be used for other processes.
Also Read: How to Change the RAM of Your Computer
In case of a hyper-V host that is having the memory of 32GB, we can create up to 15 virtual machines which can be configured by allocating 2GB of memory each. And the last 2GB is always used by the parent that is the machine itself. So, the new Windows Server 2008 R2 has introduced a new feature known as Dynamic Memory. Through this feature, we can assign more or less memory to the virtual machine dynamically. In case a virtual machine needs more memory, its gets assigned accordingly. In case if less memory is consumed, the blank space can be used by other programs or operations in the physical machine. This setup brings out the true meaning of dynamicity in allocation of memory.
Steps for Fixing Dynamic Memory allocation related issues
Clear understanding of Hyper-V Dynamic memory allocation would be a pre-requisite for fixing any related issues. If you encounter any issues with dynamic memory in Windows, you can fix it by following the below mentioned steps.
Step 1 (Startup RAM): This is the memory that is assigned to the virtual machine when the VM is booted. The available memory will always be more than the startup RAM.
Step 2 (Maximum RAM): As the name indicates this is the maximum amount of RAM that can be allocated to any virtual machine. This will never go beyond the amount of physical memory available.
Step 3 (Memory Buffer): This is the small space that is used for memory to store the data temporarily.
Now as shown in the figure above, we can configure the settings for Dynamic Memory in Windows using Hyper-V.
In the above screenshot, we can see how much memory is allocated to each machine and we can also monitor the dynamic memory allocation.