src/collectors/proc.plugin/integrations/memory_usage.md
<!--startmeta
custom_edit_url: "https://github.com/netdata/netdata/edit/master/src/collectors/proc.plugin/integrations/memory_usage.md"
meta_yaml: "https://github.com/netdata/netdata/edit/master/src/collectors/proc.plugin/metadata.yaml"
sidebar_label: "Memory Usage"
learn_status: "Published"
learn_rel_path: "Collecting Metrics/Linux Systems/Memory"
most_popular: False
message: "DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE DIRECTLY, IT IS GENERATED BY THE COLLECTOR'S metadata.yaml FILE"
endmeta-->
# Memory Usage
<img src="https://netdata.cloud/img/linuxserver.svg" width="150"/>
Plugin: proc.plugin
Module: /proc/meminfo
<img src="https://img.shields.io/badge/maintained%20by-Netdata-%2300ab44" />
## Overview
`/proc/meminfo` provides detailed information about the system's current memory usage. It includes information
about different types of memory, RAM, Swap, ZSwap, HugePages, Transparent HugePages (THP), Kernel memory,
SLAB memory, memory mappings, and more.
Monitoring /proc/meminfo can be useful for:
- **Performance Tuning**: Understanding your system's memory usage can help you make decisions about system
tuning and optimization. For example, if your system is frequently low on free memory, it might benefit
from more RAM.
- **Troubleshooting**: If your system is experiencing problems, `/proc/meminfo` can provide clues about
whether memory usage is a factor. For example, if your system is slow and cached swap is high, it could
mean that your system is swapping out a lot of memory to disk, which can degrade performance.
- **Capacity Planning**: By monitoring memory usage over time, you can understand trends and make informed
decisions about future capacity needs.
This collector is supported on all platforms.
This collector only supports collecting metrics from a single instance of this integration.
### Default Behavior
#### Auto-Detection
This integration doesn't support auto-detection.
#### Limits
The default configuration for this integration does not impose any limits on data collection.
#### Performance Impact
The default configuration for this integration is not expected to impose a significant performance impact on the system.
## Metrics
Metrics grouped by *scope*.
The scope defines the instance that the metric belongs to. An instance is uniquely identified by a set of labels.
### Per Memory Usage instance
This scope has no labels.
Metrics:
| Metric | Dimensions | Unit |
|:------|:----------|:----|
| system.ram | free, used, cached, buffers | MiB |
| mem.available | avail | MiB |
| mem.swap | free, used | MiB |
| mem.swap_cached | cached | MiB |
| mem.zswap | in-ram, on-disk | MiB |
| mem.hwcorrupt | HardwareCorrupted | MiB |
| mem.commited | Commited_AS | MiB |
| mem.writeback | Dirty, Writeback, FuseWriteback, NfsWriteback, Bounce | MiB |
| mem.kernel | Slab, KernelStack, PageTables, VmallocUsed, Percpu | MiB |
| mem.slab | reclaimable, unreclaimable | MiB |
| mem.hugepages | free, used, surplus, reserved | MiB |
| mem.thp | anonymous, shmem | MiB |
| mem.thp_details | ShmemPmdMapped, FileHugePages, FilePmdMapped | MiB |
| mem.reclaiming | Active, Inactive, Active(anon), Inactive(anon), Active(file), Inactive(file), Unevictable, Mlocked | MiB |
| mem.high_low | high_used, low_used, high_free, low_free | MiB |
| mem.cma | used, free | MiB |
| mem.directmaps | 4k, 2m, 4m, 1g | MiB |
## Alerts
The following alerts are available:
| Alert name | On metric | Description |
|:------------|:----------|:------------|
| [ ram_in_use ](https://github.com/netdata/netdata/blob/master/src/health/health.d/ram.conf) | system.ram | system memory utilization |
| [ ram_available ](https://github.com/netdata/netdata/blob/master/src/health/health.d/ram.conf) | mem.available | percentage of estimated amount of RAM available for userspace processes, without causing swapping |
| [ used_swap ](https://github.com/netdata/netdata/blob/master/src/health/health.d/swap.conf) | mem.swap | swap memory utilization |
| [ 1hour_memory_hw_corrupted ](https://github.com/netdata/netdata/blob/master/src/health/health.d/memory.conf) | mem.hwcorrupt | amount of memory corrupted due to a hardware failure |
## Setup
### Prerequisites
No action required.
### Configuration
#### File
There is no configuration file.
#### Options
There are no configuration options.
#### Examples
There are no configuration examples.