Memory used by the ESX/ESXi system.
ESX/ESXi uses at least 50MB of system memory for the VMkernel, and additional memory for device drivers. This memory is allocated when the ESX/ESXi is loaded and is not configurable.
The actual required memory for the virtualization layer depends on the number and type of PCI (peripheral component interconnect) devices on a host. Some drivers need 40MB, which almost doubles base system memory.
The ESX/ESXi host also attempts to keep some memory free at all times to handle dynamic allocation requests efficiently. ESX/ESXi sets this level at approximately six percent of the memory available for running virtual machines.
An ESXi host uses additional system memory for management agents that run in the service console of an ESX host.
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