View Memory Stats on a Hyper-V Server

in Automation on Hyper-v, Powershell

I’ve got a very simple setup in my home lab with a couple of machine running either Hyper-V or ESXi. I typically don’t have monitoring solutions running and manage each host directly, rather than part of a cluster or with SCVMM or vCenter. For Hyper-V, I try to manage it remotely via PowerShell as much as I can and so it’s handy to be able to see memory utilisation on the remote host to understand how much capacity I’ve got before powering on a VM. I’ve written a PowerShell function to return various memory stats:

  • Total RAM available in the host - using Get-VMHost.
  • Total memory in use by running VMs - by returning the running VMs and finding the current amount of RAM assigned to each VM with Get-VM. This works with dynamic memory.
  • Available memory to run additional VMs - using Get-Counter to gather the ‘\Memory\Available Bytes’ performance counter
  • How much memory is used by the system - this is calculated by adding what’s in use by VMs, to the available memory and subtracting the results from the physical RAM in the host. This is a rough calculation, but an interesting metric to view.

The function returns an array that includes each stat. Here’s an example of what the function returns. All values are in gigabytes and multiple hosts can be specified to gather details from.

PS C:\> Get-HvMem -ComputerName hv1


Name         : hv1
HostRAMGB    : 11.904224395752
VMInUseGB    : 7.12890625
SystemUsedGB : 1.46017837524414
AvailableGB  : 3.31513977050781

Here’s the code listing for the Get-HvMem function:

Function Get-HvMem {
    <#
        .SYNOPSIS
            Return Hyper-V host RAM details.
 
        .DESCRIPTION
            This function returns the total available RAM, RAM in use by VMs and the available RAM on a Hyper-V host.
 
        .PARAMETER ComputerName
            Specifies one or more Hyper-V hosts to retrieve stats from.
 
        .EXAMPLE
            Get-HvRAM -ComputerName hyperv1

        .NOTES
 
        .LINK
            /hyperv-memory-powershell
 
    #>
    param(
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true, Position=0,HelpMessage="Hyper-V host.")]
        [string[]]$ComputerName = $(throw = "Please specify a remote Hyper-V host to gather memory details from.")
    )

    # Create an array to return
    $allStats = @()

    ForEach ( $computer in $ComputerName ) {

        # Create an array to contain this computer's metrics
        $a = @()

        # Get details for Hyper-V host
        $vmHost = Get-VMHost -ComputerName $computer

        If ($vmHost) {

            # Get total RAM consumed by running VMs.
            $total = 0
            Get-VM -ComputerName $computer | Where-Object { $_.State -eq "Running" } | Select-Object Name, MemoryAssigned | ForEach-Object { $total = $total + $_.MemoryAssigned }

            #Get available RAM via performance counters
            $Bytes = Get-Counter -ComputerName $computer -Counter "\Memory\Available Bytes"

            # Convert values to GB
            $availGB = ($Bytes[0].CounterSamples.CookedValue / 1GB)
            $hostGB = ($vmhost.MemoryCapacity / 1GB)
            $vmInUse = ($total / 1GB)

            # Construct an array of properties to return
            $item = New-Object PSObject

            # Add host name
            $item | Add-Member -type NoteProperty -Name 'Name' -Value $vmHost.Name

            # Host RAM in GB
            $item | Add-Member -type NoteProperty -Name 'HostRAMGB' -Value $hostGB

            # In use RAM in GB
            $item | Add-Member -type NoteProperty -Name 'VMInUseGB' -Value $vmInUse

            # System used in GB
            $item | Add-Member -type NoteProperty -Name 'SystemUsedGB' -Value ($hostGB - ($vmInUse + $availGB))

            # Available RAM in GB
            $item | Add-Member -type NoteProperty -Name 'AvailableGB' -Value $availGB
            $a += $item
        }

        # Add the current machine details to the array to return
        $allStats += $a
    }
    Return $allStats
}

Comments or feedback on bugs, better ways to do things or additional steps is welcome.