Memory has quietly become one of the most expensive and least optimized components in modern infrastructure and most environments are still sizing it the same way they did years ago…
But what are the options available for organizations leveraging VMware today?
Option 1: Pay Current Memory Prices and Change Nothing
This is the default path, however, also the most expensive one.
Organizations continue sizing hosts with large memory footprint, absorbing rising memory costs while maintaining the same operational model. It’s simple and low-risk from an execution standpoint, but it increases your CAPex expenses and offers no improvement in efficiency. As memory prices fluctuate upward, this approach directly impacts server BOM costs and long-term TCO without delivering any architectural advantages.
Bottom line: Lowest effort, highest cost, zero optimization.
Option 2: Optimize VM Memory Utilization
This path focuses on right-sizing workloads by reclaiming wasted memory.
By analyzing active vs. provisioned memory, tuning reservations, limits, and oversized VMs, organizations can often free up 20–40% of unused DRAM. This improves consolidation ratios and delays hardware purchases, but it requires ongoing operational discipline, tooling, and governance.
A key advantage here is the ability to leverage VMware Cloud Foundation Operations (formerly known as Aria Operations or vROPs) to identify oversized VMs, inactive memory, and optimization opportunities. Since VCF Operations is already included with VVF and VCF licensing, many organizations are leaving value on the table by not actively using it.
Bottom line: Strong efficiency gains, but labor-intensive and not infinitely scalable.
Option 3: Leverage VMware Memory Tiering to NVMe
This is the architectural optimization path.
With NVMe memory tiering in VMware Cloud Foundation 9, organizations extend host memory capacity by transparently combining DRAM with lower-cost NVMe SSDs. Hot pages stay in DRAM, cold pages move to NVMe. This enables higher VM density, better CPU utilization, and dramatically lower cost per usable GB of memory without requiring guest OS changes.
This approach reduces reliance on expensive DRAM while preserving performance where it matters most.
Bottom line: The most scalable, cost-efficient option for organizations looking to modernize with VCF9.
Final Takeaway
- Do nothing → predictable, but costly
- Optimize VMs → smart, but operationally heavy
- Memory tiering → strategic, scalable, and economically superior
