I've reduced the number of datastores and increased their size. However this didn't seem to have a positive effect. After that I was only able to power on 80 machines before seeing insufficient memory errors again.
I've increased the memory of the ESXi nodes once again to 6.5GB per host. This seems to be sufficient as I am now able to power on all 100 VMs.
Success!
PowerCLI C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\vSphere PowerCLI> Get-VM | Start-VM Name PowerState Num CPUs MemoryGB ---- ---------- -------- -------- TCLVM1 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-68 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-35 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-36 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-37 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-38 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-17 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-39 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-18 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-15 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-16 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-19 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-30 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-31 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-10 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-32 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-33 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-91 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-34 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-13 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-14 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-92 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-11 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-72 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-90 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-12 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-95 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-73 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-96 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-74 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-93 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-75 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-54 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-94 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-55 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-99 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-52 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-53 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-70 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-71 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-97 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-50 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-98 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-51 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-76 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-77 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-78 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-58 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-79 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-59 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-56 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-57 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-45 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-44 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-43 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-26 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-42 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-25 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-41 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-40 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-28 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-27 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-08 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-07 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-06 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-29 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-05 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-49 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-20 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-48 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-09 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-47 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-22 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-46 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-21 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-24 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-23 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-82 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-04 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-81 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-03 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-80 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-02 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-01 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-63 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-86 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-62 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-85 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-65 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-84 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-64 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-83 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-89 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-61 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-88 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-60 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-87 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-67 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-66 PoweredOn 1 0,063 TCLVM-69 PoweredOn 1 0,063
Physical resources usage after all VMs were powered on:
CPU was hovering at around 30% while the memory was clearly at 100% with a page file of little over 4GB. After a while things settled down a bit:
Maybe I could make even more clones? What do you reckon?