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Hello everyone, Excuse the title. I'm trying to do something very specific that goes against some common assumptions. I am aware of how Linux uses available memory to cache. This, in almost all cases, is desirable. I've spent years explaining to users how to properly read the free output. I'm now trying to increase VM density on host systems (by host, I mean the physical system, not

...> being "used?. Nope. VMware?s memory ballooning feature purposely keeps some of the guest?s RAM locked away from the kernel. This is where RAM comes from when another guest needs more physical RAM than it currently has access to: https://blogs.vmware.com/virtualreality/2008/10/memory-overcomm.html There are downsides. One is that pages locked up by the balloon driver aren?t being used by Linux?s buffer cache. But on the other hand, the hypervisor itself fulfills some of that role, which is why rebooting a VM guest is typically much faster than rebooting the same OS on the same bare h...