Understanding RAM usage and KSM sharing

batijuank

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Nov 16, 2017
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Hello to the community, I'm trying to understand this two parameters that appear on the Web Interface Summary tab on each node. I'm posting this image show both parameters.

KSM-RAM-usage.png

As you can see my node RAM has used 4.65 GiB and ksmtunned service has consolidated 6.91 GiB. I thought that RAM usage display how much RAM does the system has used, but since KSM sharing is bigger than the RAM usage, it seems this assumption is wrong. Moreover, when I run the command free over a ssh connection in my node i get this:

Code:
# free -h
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            15G        4,7G        9,4G         52M        1,5G         10G
Swap:          7,0G          0B        7,0G

As you can see used RAM is 4.7 GiB wich is the same as the one displayed on Web Interface. Could someone explain me how can I interpret this? Why KSM sharing value is higher than RAM usage?
 
Last edited:
How many VMs are running there? Normally KSM sharing references all "deduplicated" memory, so your overall ram usage would be normally almost 7 GB higher than now.
 
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How many VMs are running there? Normally KSM sharing references all "deduplicated" memory, so your overall ram usage would be normally almost 7 GB higher than now.

2 KVM NethServer 7.4.1708 with 2GiB each one
2 KVM Win2012R2 with 4GiB each one
No CT at the moment
Proxmox node has 16 GiB

Right now I have 7.26 GiB RAM used and 6.71 GiB in KSM sharing