NSX Edge node Memory consumption is over 50% even if there are no traffic flowing via the edge node

Products

• VMware NSX

Issue/Introduction

Purpose of this document is to make aware of this expected behavior of overall memory consumption by a NSX Edge node.

• A new edge node which is not even placed in edge cluster so that SR/DR components are instantiated on it or, an existing edge node which is hosting SR/DR components but it's overall memory consumption is in the category of 50-70% by general.
• This has been seen irrespective of the traffic load on the edge node.
• There has been no reports of performance degradation for traffic flowing via the edge node.
• You can see the overall memory consumption by the edge node by either,
• Using the below API call against the UUID of the edge node:

                    GET /api/v1/transport-nodes/<node-id>/status
                 

• Or from 'root' mode CLI  of the Edge node

'                  top'  then press 'm'
                 

• You can also find the memory usage information from edge node support bundle /var/log/vmware/top-mem.log

Note: The preceding log excerpts are only examples. Date, time, and environmental variables may vary depending on your environment.

Environment

VMware NSX-T Data Center
VMware NSX

Resolution

50% of the system memory of a NSX Edge node is reserved for data-path memory-pools and some amount of memory is also reserved for rx queues. So, this is expected to see overall memory consumption of an edge node is always over 50%

Additional Information

If this article did not help resolve your issue, you can review the following article for further information about Edge Datapath mempool usage high alarm