How to Enable CPU and Memory Hot Plug in a VMware VM

Read this guide to learn how to enable CPU and memory Hot Plug in a VMware VM. The guide explains how to enable the feature from vCenter.

What is CPU and Memory Hot Plug?

Have you ever tried modifying the virtual CPU or memory of a VM while it is powered on and realized that the options are grayed out?

The reason these options are not available is that the CPU and memory hot plug are not enabled on the VM.

CPU and Memory hotplug are features that allow you to modify the CPU or memory assigned to a VMware VM while the VM is powered on.

Procedure to Enable the Features

1. Sign in to vCenter, shut down the VM, and open its Edit page.
2. To Edit a VM in vCenter, search for the VM and left-click it. Then, from its ACTIONS menu, choose Edit Settings.

3. Then, on the VM’s Edit Settings page, to enable CPU Memory Hot Plug, expand CPU. After that, check the checkbox next to Enable CPU Hot Add.

Close the CPU details menu.

4. To enable Memory Hot Plug, expand Memory, scroll to and check Memory Hot Plug, and check Enable.

Finally, to save the changes, click OK.

Once the changes are saved, start the VM. Now, the option to modify CPU and Menory while the VM is powered on is enabled.

Conclusion

Enabling CPU and memory Hot Plug in a VMware VM allows you to modify the VM’s virtual CPU or RAM while it is powered on. This is very useful in production where you want to add more resources to a VM but avoid downtime.

However, to benefit from this feature, you must enable Enable CPU Hot Add and Memory Hot Plug on the VM to be able to expand those resources on the fly.

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