Examples provide a pooled memory heartbeat for virtual machine hosts. A virtual controller creates a pooled memory heartbeat file system in a shared memory partition of a pooled memory. An agent running on each host in a plurality of virtual machine hosts updates a heartbeat file at an update time interval to lock the heartbeat file. The lock indicates the heartbeat status for a given host is active. A master agent accesses the shared memory partition to check the heartbeat status of each host in the pooled memory file system. The heartbeat status is used to determine whether a host that has lost pooled memory access, is network isolated, or failed. If the pooled memory heartbeat status for a given host indicates the host is a failed host, the set of virtual machines running on the given host are respawned on another healthier host.