NIOS 9.x - Unusual high memory consumption

[#1]

Hi guys,

Have you been noticed an unusual high consumption of memory regarding NIOS 9.x? Something around 43% even without any services running?

I have been deploying it from scratch, as well as migrating to it, mostly in VMware on-prem infrastructure. Every appliance is showing around 43% of used memory, something like a "default". There are no processes listed in 'show memory' output that is occuping this amount. It's something like the appliance is preallocating the memory. Very weird.

Thanks in advance. Look forward to your insights.

Nilton Carlos  

[#2]

NIOS 9.0.X Why does the NIOS Memory Utilization “increase” after upgrading to NIOS 9.0.1 or above re...

Answer:

Infoblox utilizes Huge Pages for Database (DB) Cache. Before NIOS 9.0.1, these DB Cache/Huge Pages were treated as Cached and were included in the Available memory calculation, resulting in the Available memory being high, although the huge pages were being used by the DB Cache.

Since Infoblox BloxOne does not include huge pages in the calculation for Available memory, and this resulted in contradictory reporting between BloxOne and Infoblox NIOS. Infoblox has decided to follow the same approach for the memory calculation in NIOS as that of BloxOne, where huge pages would not be considered cached. This way, both NIOS and BloxOne, would use the same kernel Available metric calculation, which would roughly be free + buffers + cached, and this is the correct approach. As available memory is lower in this approach, used memory would appear to be high. Please note that Used Memory = Total Memory – Available Memory.

For instance, if we calculate the available memory from the MEM line extracted from ‘NIOS 8.6.2 – PTOP’ provided below, it would come around to 97.2 as it includes the sh (DB Cache – 22.7) value along with free (61.0) + cached (13.5) resulting in 97.2 Available Memory.

MEM t 134819827712 f 61.0 b 0.2 c 13.5 s 0.7 a 1.7 sh 22.7 sw 0.0 25769799680 h 14617 0 pio 0.8 63.5 sio 0.0 0.0

Whereas if you look at a similar MEM line extracted from NIOS 9.0.1 – PTOP, we can see that the Available Memory is 76.6 (free: 67.6 + cached: 9.0). As of now, we do not include the DB cache in the calculation, and this is a more accurate way of doing the calculation.

MEM t 134702784512 f 67.6 b 0.2 c 9.0 s 0.7 a 1.8 sh 20.7 sw 0.0 25769799680 h 13269 0 A 76.2 pio 0.9 67.0 sio 0.0 0.0

In short, the way NIOS accounts for Available memory has changed in the latest version to exclude DB Cache/Huge Pages. This results in a more accurate calculation of the Used Memory in comparison to previous versions, although it might appear higher.