Guest VM showing HIGH memory usage when nothing is using the memory

hyper-vhyper-v-server-2012-r2memorymemory usage

I have a guest VM setup in my Hyper-V environment that I'm trying to us dynamic memory with. The following settings are being used…

  • Startup RAM: 8192
  • Minimum RAM: 2048
  • Maximum RAM: 8192
  • Memory buffer: 20%
  • Memory weight: Medium on the slider

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I think I might have something configured wrong because as soon as I boot up the VM and go into task manager on the guest VM to look at the performance tab I see that the server has the following usage…
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The funny part is that NOTHING is using that memory (below sorted with highest mem at top)…
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Why does it show such a high memory usage?


UPDATE

Per an answer provided I wanted to show the resource manager too. It shows the exact same thing.
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Best Answer

You enabled Dynamic Memory. So, while there's nothing requiring that memory in your VM, the hypervisor asked for the memory back, and received it. To make sure that this memory that the guest OS has released back to the hypervisor isn't accidentally used (which would cause the guest OS to fault,) the Dynamic Memory integration component (a device driver) in the guest has allocated it. This is why the report shows the memory as allocated.