To put it simple; every time I start a VM which has memory balancing enabled, it starts with the minimum specified in the settings, but as soon as I get the Domain has started notification it instantly shoots to the maximum memory specified in the settings, despite the VM actually using much less than what’s specified.
As an example, I have a work VM with a setting of 2048 MB minimum memory and 6144 MB maximum memory, and every time I start it, it starts with 2048 MB of RAM as its stated to be “starting” and shoots up to 6144 MB as it finishes starting. Checking the actual memory usage inside the VM shows it using 516 MB of RAM.
I’m not sure if this might be a reason, but I think it’s worth noting that I have limited the Dom0 memory allocation to a maximum of 1.5 GiB (within /boot/efi/EFI/xen.cfg)