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I have a PostgreSQL Amazon RDS instance. Freeable Memory has been declining since setup over the past week. It started at 15GB of memory and is now down to 13.5GB, but no one is using the site.

I am worried that the DB will run out of memory and crash in about a month with the pace it's going at. I don't understand why freeable memory is being consumed without any requests being made to it. Additionally, shouldn't freeable memory clear up while the instance is inactive?

Is there something I should be aware of or fix?

Thank you!

jape
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  • Maybe "freeable" means "will be freed if anything needs it", but since nothing needs it right now, it might as well stay used? (Not a term I've heard before.) – IMSoP Aug 24 '15 at 19:55
  • possible duplicate of [Amazon RDS running out of freeable memory. Should I be worried?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15332158/amazon-rds-running-out-of-freeable-memory-should-i-be-worried) – tedder42 Aug 24 '15 at 20:51

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As @IMSoP mentions in a comment, "freeable" means "can be freed if needed". You are only using 10% of the possible memory; this is a common garbage collection technique.

If freeable memory is low (90%, instead of 10%) and CPU or swap are busy, that may be a sign you can benefit from a larger instance size.

tedder42
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