How do you monitor and manage memory usage effectively on Linux and Windows?

Another thing to consider with swap space is the potential impact it will have on your drive access as well. Since your system will be trying to utilize space on your HDD or SSD, that can cause a bottleneck for the applications running to access the data that is also on that drive. This can then also become self defeating, with applications taking longer to run and then due to multitasking that application is swapped out so another can run, slowing everything down. You also need to be aware of how much more it might put a strain on your HDD or SSD, potentially leading to earlier failures. In the long term, it is cheaper to make sure the system has the memory it needs, rather than depending on swap space.

One thing that is important to consider is that memory leaks can be of different speeds. In some cases, you can see an application or service increasing in memory usage quite quickly. However, there is also the possibility that the memory leak is very slow, or only triggered under specific circumstances. This can make them harder to identify, since IT support staff have limited time to debug an issue. They may not notice the problem occurring during a short review, and may not put the application through the specific use case that causes it. This is why implementing a tool that tracks and logs the memory over time, especially longer periods, is critical.

Memory leaks can cause various problems in your infrastructure, from malfunctioning applications to increased costs. The speed at which memory leaks are displayed can vary for different applications. Therefore, it is crucial to establish application-specific metrics and thresholds that are carefully considered for each particular application. Due to the complexity of memory leaks, investigating and resolving them often requires highly skilled employees, which can take a long time. Additionally, it is vital to monitor memory leak detection over time and after each application release.

Grafana & Prometheus tools is used for monitoring server resources using node exporter for Linux & wmi-exporter for windows.

Consider implementing a centralized monitoring tool. These generally involve adding an agent to each system, that helps track and monitor things like memory and disk usage. This can help keep track of long term usage, allowing support staff to see a history of how that device has been used and acting, and if the issues happened at a specific point in time that might align with an update or change. Many of these solutions also provide additional tracking for things like patches, software updates, security alerts and others. If you are considering such a system, make sure that the agent can also collect basic hardware related metrics.

It is a good idea to have a centralized monitoring tool stack like Grafana and Prometheus. However, one should be careful not to over-monitor and be overwhelmed by the vast amount of metrics. Instead, it is better to focus on the most important metrics and set specific thresholds for each application. Each threshold should be considered both from a malfunction point of view and a business impact point of view. In other words, if the app is running slowly and causing a bad user experience, it might have an impact on the business.