<![CDATA[Alternative to memory ballooning]]>Memory ballooning is a good thing, but can lead to issues, especially during migration. Since Citrix seems to have abandoned the technology, I am happy Xcp-ng keeps it.

In QEMU/KVM/VirtIO world there is a new thing as an alternative to ballooning, which is memory hot plug. https://virtio-mem.gitlab.io/

The basic idea is to emulate memory modules and utilise OS support for memory hot plug, something that has been used on bare metal servers before.

Could this be a avenue to develop with xcp-ng to overcome the limitations of the traditional ballooning?

One clear benefit is to be able to add more memory than originally allocated a guest without restarting the guest.

]]>https://xcp-ng.org/forum/topic/7857/alternative-to-memory-ballooningRSS for NodeWed, 14 Oct 2026 03:29:35 GMTSun, 15 Oct 2023 16:55:48 GMT60<![CDATA[Reply to Alternative to memory ballooning on Sun, 15 Oct 2023 19:00:15 GMT]]>No sure this will be compatible with the level of memory isolation provided in Xen (vs the more "open bar" model in KVM). Worth taking a look though, thanks for the link.

]]>https://xcp-ng.org/forum/post/66565https://xcp-ng.org/forum/post/66565Sun, 15 Oct 2023 19:00:15 GMT