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High Ram usage
I too am having this issue. Every time I stop an Antlet, it doesn't seem to give back any RAM. I just started using antMan this week, after the original install, I was showing less than 10% RAM in use. I added one Antlet, an Ubuntu LXC with 2GB of RAM and that went to about 20%. I then added a Windows Server 2019 KVM with 4GB and it went to about 60%. I restarted the Windows Server and RAM usage went to 70%. Now I'm back to only running the 2GB Ubuntu LXC and still showing 71% RAM usage.
I have to refresh the browser sometimes to see changes in disk, cpu, and ram usage. It doesn't always update on its own.
That didn't make any difference for me. Multiple browsers, multiple machines.
However, I did find this on the main support site - https://support.antsle.com/portal/kb/articles/oversubscribing-ram-error where it talks about there being no swap set. I did have this situation. So I have added a swap partition and have rebooted. We'll see whether it fixes it or not.
A follow-up to this after having added the swap. I don't think anything's changed particularly. I left the same machines running, not really doing much for a number of days and the memory percentage is slowly creeping up. Shutting machines down does reduce the memory used, but not by as much as it should. Eventually, if left running for another couple of weeks, I would say my usage will be near 100%.
Kind of disappointing that this seems to have no traction with Antsle people yet it's clearly a problem that many are encountering.
@kentongs - I heard Antsle people :D.
ZFS uses any "freed up" RAM as a cache and then releases it back when needed. It's called an ARC cache. More here in the docs
Or...is your case more that you can't start a new antlet because it says the RAM is oversubscribed but you have checked all your running antlets and know that you should have plenty of RAM space for more?
From the antsle, what do the 8 memory numbers from the "top" command look like?
Mem total free used buff/cache
swap total free used avail Mem
Also, I've found that the memory/cpu settings on LXCs do not affect them. My LXCs appear to have full access to all RAM and CPUs of the antsle.
@ddmscott, I haven't hit that point yet, but I'm also using the community edition and so don't have too many Antlets running at the same time. I'm concerned with the way it slowly eats RAM even under very light use. I'll play around with it more with some bigger Antlets and see if it backs off as machines need more RAM.
@lancem - the Top numbers are pretty consistent with the GUI numbers.
Thanks.
@kentongs, good to know. The "eating more RAM" piece should be consistent with ZFS throwing files into the cache to speed up your read/write.
ZFS has been referred to as a "next gen" file system because of some of these cool things where it really speeds things up and reduces storage use.
For example, if you create 5 antlets based on an ubuntu template, the antlets will only take up incrementally more storage as they diverge from the "mother" template.
Then, using ARC cache, ZFS starts putting frequently accessed files from the "mother" template into RAM which basically means you have 5 servers with response times equivalent to them running from RAM.
The moment the RAM is needed its released back, then when you stop an antlet, that RAM becomes free again and the ARC cache in it starts growing again.
I hope this helps.
You guys can try running this command
awk '/^size/ {print $3 / 1048576 }' </proc/spl/kstat/zfs/arcstats
It will show the current size of the ZFS ARC (Adaptive Replacement Cache) in MiB. Just tried on one of my antsles and it gave me 13GB.
We might show "real" RAM usage and ZFS ARC separately as two readings in future antMan releases.
The ZFS ARC will be automatically evicted when the system comes under memory pressure. So the memory isn't tied up by the ARC, just put to good use while there is no other use for the RAM at the moment. Very cool feature.
If someone has get an issue of not being able to create antlets with a "RAM oversubscribed" message, please details about it here so we can get to the bottom of it.
Just installed Antman 3.1.0f and yay!
.f Bug Fixes, RAM Cache Management
- Fixed issues with copying antlets
- Improved Portfowarding with the creation of default portfowarding rules when antlet is created
- Ability to clear RAM Cache if it is not being released automatically (this is under the ZFS Settings)
- New color in RAM meter to distinguish what is used for RAM and what is used by Cache
+1 for listing the changes per letter version!
+1 for the Cache info (more info is always better)!
FYI - if you upgrade and don't see the new settings/info, you probably have to clear your browser cache.
CTRL-F5 in most browsers
P.S It'd be even cooler if hovering over the RAM usage bar would show how much is RAM and how much is ARC 🙂