Linux shows high memory usage on the server.
Article ID: 331715
Updated On:
Products
VMware Smart Assurance
Issue/Introduction
Symptoms:
How do I check for memory usage on Linux server running Smart Assurance applications?
Linux shows high memory usage on the Smart Assurance server
Running the free -m command on the Linux server running Smart Assurance software shows high memory usage
Environment
Smarts - 10.1.x
Cause
Linux attempts to keep as much in memory as possible to improve performance.
Resolution
To calculate the "free" memory on the Linux server running Smart Assurance software, you need to sum the free physical memory (free) to the memory allocated to buffers (buff/cache).
Sample free -m command output:
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 16633348 10017812 6615536 0 177268 8765432
-/+ buffers/cache: 137108 3907676
Swap: 1052216 0 1052216
Sample top command output:
top - 10:11:27 up 2 days, 15:48, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
Tasks: 82 total, 1 running, 81 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 0.9% us, 0.0% sy, 0.0% ni, 99.1% id, 0.0% wa, 0.0% hi, 0.0% si
Mem: 16633348k total, 10017812k used, 6615536k free, 177268k buffers
Swap: 1052216k total, 0k used, 1052216k free, 8765432k cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
5107 root 16 0 1749m 901m 51m S 4 5.6 356:43.90 sm_server
4027 root 16 0 50952 2380 1748 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 sm_serviced
5109 root 16 0 17876 2768 2464 S 0 0.0 0:00.54 sm_authority
4115 dbus 16 0 13568 948 764 S 0 0.0 0:00.06 dbus-daemon-1
3811 root 16 0 12604 4592 2444 S 0 0.0 0:18.79 snmpd
From the example of the top command output above, we can see that 8GB out of the total 16GB physical RAM is being used as disk cache. Even though running the "top" or "free -m" command on a Linux Server would show a physical memory usage of 10GB, the reality is that 8GB out of the 10GB is readily available to any process that might need it via disk caching.
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