Cisco 2950s with high memory utilization

[jkaftan]

I have implimented Solar Winds NPM. It is telling me that most of my cisco 2950s are experiencing high memory utilization. I am trying to determine if this is normal or if I have a problem.

I seem to remember that Cisco does not report memory utilization accurately. My CPU on these switches is low.

Should I be worried?

I ran a sh processes memory it nothing jumped out at me. I was looking at the 'Holding' column for each process.

See attachment.

 

[vipergg]

If you have 50 vlans all being trunked and allowed on the trunk that will suck up some considerable amount memory because the switch then has to allocated resources for all those spanning tree sessions so that may be where a lot of your memory is going.

 

[jkaftan]

Makes sense. I did a sh proc mem and it looks like spanning tree is pretty busy. I cannot make sense of the numbers, for instance it looks like I have more allocated to spanning tree then there is in the switch. Perhaps the "Total" number is in KB and the spanning tree number is in bytes or bits. Regardless it looks like a lot of memory is allocated to spanning-tree.

I am planning on pruning. If I assume the 2950s will not have to deal with spanning tree on all vlans. Is that true?


I did a sh proc mem and it looks like spanning tree is pretty busy.

Total: 7947968, Used: 5041188, Free: 2906780
PID TTY Allocated Freed Holding Getbufs Retbufs Process
35 0 3144531320 2472071116 17828 814811140 1100405312 Spanning Tree

 

[brianinms]

Every 2950 I have ever seen has run well over 80-85% memory utilization. Its just normal for that platform.