Intermittent communication due to NSX-T Edge datapath mempool usage high alarm and firewall memory exhaustion

Products

• VMware NSX

Issue/Introduction

• An NSX-T Edge Node is triggering an "Edge datapath mempool usage high alarm". The datapath mempool usage is reaching 100%, resulting in memory resource exhaustion 
• In the Syslog of the edge (var/log/syslog) you will be able to see similar error:
  
  

2026-03-30T17:44:27.248Z  datapath-systemd-helper 3505 - -  2026-03-30T17:44:27Z datapathd 3589 firewalldp [ERROR] Memory resource from hugepage exhausted in the firewall service size=1144(0M)
2026-03-30T17:44:27.144Z NSX 3589 FABRIC [nsx@6876 comp="nsx-edge" subcomp="datapathd" s2comp="stats" level="INFO"] mempool exhausted, usage: 100, threshold: 85, pool: pfstatepl3
2026-03-30T17:44:27.204Z NSX 3589 FIREWALL [nsx@6876 comp="nsx-edge" subcomp="datapathd" s2comp="firewalldp" level="ERROR"] Dropped 31 log messages in last 0 seconds (most recently, 0 seconds ago) due to excessive rate
2026-03-30T17:44:27.204Z  NSX 3589 FIREWALL [nsx@6876 comp="nsx-edge" subcomp="datapathd" s2comp="firewalldp" level="ERROR"] Memory resource from hugepage exhausted in the firewall service size=1144(0M)
2026-03-30T17:44:27.749Z 2086 - -  2026-03-30T17:44:27Z datapathd 3589 firewalldp [ERROR] Dropped 31 log messages in last 0 seconds (most recently, 0 seconds ago) due to excessive rate
2026-03-30T17:44:27.885Z  2086 - -  2026-03-30T17:44:27Z datapathd 3589 firewalldp [ERROR] Memory resource from hugepage exhausted in the firewall service size=1144(0M)
2026-03-30T17:44:27.600Z  datapath-systemd-helper 3505 - -  2026-03-30T17:44:27Z datapathd 3589 firewalldp [ERROR] Dropped 31 log messages in last 0 seconds (most recently, 0 seconds ago) due to excessive rate
2026-03-30T17:44:27.662Z datapath-systemd-helper 3505 - -  2026-03-30T17:44:27Z datapathd 3589 firewalldp [ERROR] Memory resource from hugepage exhausted in the firewall service size=1144(0M)

• Also on the edge under (var/log/nsx-event.log) the NSX-event.log you will be able to find a similar entry 

79>1 2026-03-30T17:33:47.592Z NSX 3589 FABRIC [nsx@6876 comp="nsx-edge" subcomp="datapathd" s2comp="stats" tname="stats11" level="ERROR" eventId="vmwNSXEdgeMpoolUsage"] {"event_state":100,"event_external_reason":"Edge datapath memory usage is over 85%","event_src_comp_id":"#-##-#####-###"","event_sources":{"pool_name":"pfstatepl3"}}
<179>1 2026-03-30T17:35:47.594ZNSX 3589 FABRIC [nsx@6876 comp="nsx-edge" subcomp="datapathd" s2comp="stats" tname="stats11" level="ERROR" eventId="vmwNSXEdgeMpoolUsage"] {"event_state":100,"event_external_reason":"Edge datapath memory usage is over 85%","event_src_comp_id":"#-##-#####-###","event_sources":{"pool_name":"pfstatepl3"}}

Environment

VMware NSX

Cause

The affected NSX-T Edge Node is deployed undersize to the environment requirement  . These allocated hardware resources are insufficient to handle the current network traffic and firewall state tracking requirements, leading to the exhaustion of hugepage memory allocations for the datapath.

Resolution

1. Deploy a new NSX-T Edge Node appliance with a "Medium" or "Large" form factor to align with the active network and security workloads.

2. Utilize the NSX Edge node replacement procedure to swap the correctly sized appliance with the undersized node.