topic Palo alto PA3060 high memory usage over 60% in General Topics

Palo alto PA3060 high memory usage over 60%

WilsonWu — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 08:33:30 GMT

Hi everyone,

In our performance report, it is find some Palo Alto PA3060 firewall memory usage keep high than > 60%, which trigger resource alarm refer our monitoring standard.

I tried action like reboot device but memory level remain more or less the same. May advise way that can lower memory usage, say, <60%

I also try to following the PA official KB https://knowledgebase.paloaltonetworks.com/KCSArticleDetail?id=kA14u000000oNDmCAM ,

But it seems not works for my FWs. So i would like to seeking for your guys help are there any ways to reduce memory usage.

Examples for over 60%:
Used memory / Total Memory : 2397668 / 3849876 = 62.2%
Used memory / Total Memory : 2430168 / 3849876 = 63.1%

show system resources

top - 01:19:07 up 26 days, 1:08, 1 user, load average: 0.16, 0.21, 0.18
Tasks: 124 total, 4 running, 120 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
%Cpu(s): 6.6 us, 2.4 sy, 0.3 ni, 89.9 id, 0.4 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.5 si, 0.0 st
KiB Mem : 3849876 total, 65872 free, 2045912 used, 1738092 buff/cache
KiB Swap: 3056660 total, 2768548 free, 288112 used. 1393720 avail Mem

Thanks for all.

Re: Palo alto PA3060 high memory usage over 60%

kiwi — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 10:07:39 GMT

Hi @WilsonWu ,

Hard to say with the information provided.

Try to troubleshoot the high CPU to find the culprit :

How To Troubleshoot High Management Plane CPU Usage.

That said, your device might be having normal load with the amount work it's doing. If it's not possible to reduce activity on the device, consider an upgrade to a higher capability platform with a larger Management CPU capacity. Refer to product selection to compare your firewall to other platforms.

Kind regards,

Kim.

Re: Palo alto PA3060 high memory usage over 60%

BPry — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 21:52:46 GMT

@WilsonWu,

I wouldn't at all be concerned about that memory utilization. The firewall allocates the vast majority of it's memory and will report very little free memory depending on the platform that you're using. Whatever you're using for monitoring should likely be updated so it isn't trigger an alarm on memory on the firewalls until your above at least 85% utilization, and that's if it's smart enough to be properly calculating the true utilized memory and not just reading memory free.

Re: Palo alto PA3060 high memory usage over 60%

WilsonWu — Fri, 07 Jun 2024 04:09:27 GMT

Hi Bpry,

Thank you for your explain. So may i know where can i check the majority usage of MP in TSF? Since i would like to verify memory usage over 60% is abnormal or not.

Thanks.