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Understanding Memory Allocation on Compute Servers

This document outlines the memory configuration on our compute servers and how it affects job execution.

Reserved Memory for System Services

To ensure stability and reliability, 8GB of memory on each compute server is reserved for core system services. This is managed using a cgroup memory limit and is not available for user jobs.

This reservation guarantees that essential services have the dedicated resources they need to function correctly, preventing them from being impacted by user-submitted jobs.

How This Affects Your Jobs

When submitting a job, you must account for this reserved memory. The maximum memory your job can use is the server's total memory minus the 8GB reservation.

Action Required: Calculate your job's maximum memory as: (Total Server Memory) - 8GB.

Example:

  • A server has 256GB of total memory.
  • The max usable memory for your job is 248GB (256GB - 8GB).

Warning: If your job's memory usage exceeds this usable limit, it will be automatically terminated by the system's Out-of-Memory (OOM) killer to protect the server's stability.


Keywords:
compute server memory reserved limit research 
Doc ID:
158133
Owned by:
Emile T. in DiscoverIT
Created:
2026-01-27
Updated:
2026-01-27
Sites:
Discovery Building IT