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This is going to seem like a silly question, but many many years ago I somehow got it into my head, perhaps from reading an article or speaking to people 'in the know' that a computer should not be run with 'odd' amounts of ram, such as 3, 5, 7 etc... Is there any truth in this whatsoever?

I have a vmware environment with many servers in it. I want to go through and alter the amounts of ram to reduce the overall ram usage and in many cases I want to give a server 3gb of ram as opposed to 4 or 2.

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I've never ever seen any proof that the precise value of RAM matters on a virtual machine. I suppose it's not implausible that some legacy systems may somehow expect an even number, but that would just be incredibly bad engineering.

Certainly - it's pretty natural for people to allocate in multiples, but this tends to be because they know Server [A] needs 8GB of RAM, rather than 7GB.

If you want to give you server 3GB, then absolutely go right ahead; I use odd numbers all of the time.

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    The only thing i've seen, is some apps that require a minimum. So defining 2000MB as your memory may cause an app issues that are looking for 2048MB.
    – DanBig
    Nov 29, 2013 at 16:10
  • @DanBig Yep, another great point. I'll also confess that, whenever asked in MB, I just have to write the exact to Gigabyte conversion.
    – Dan
    Nov 29, 2013 at 16:11
  • This is good enough for me. I'm going to try a few on 3gb.
    – MrVimes
    Nov 29, 2013 at 16:16
  • Several years ago 3GB was quite common for Windows desktop machines. Now it's mostly 4GB or 8GB. So if that worked, why wouldn't it work in a VM? I prefer to use the common values, like 1024MB, 2048MB etc. The advantage is that it makes it easier to calculate what is left.
    – SPRBRN
    Nov 29, 2013 at 16:19
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It's fine. There's no downside. Remember, the granularity is is Megabytes, so if you need 2,560MB instead of 2GB or 3GB, it's fine, fully supported and a non-issue.

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