Understanding memory usage

Qdrant operates with two types of memory:

• Resident memory (aka RSSAnon) - memory used for internal data structures like the ID tracker, plus components that must stay in RAM, such as quantized vectors when always_ram=true and payload indexes.

• OS page cache - memory used for caching disk reads, which can be released when needed. Original vectors are normally stored in page cache, so the service won't crash if RAM is full, but performance may degrade.

It is normal for the OS page cache to occupy all available RAM, but if resident memory is above 80% of total RAM, it is a sign of a problem.

Memory usage monitoring

• Qdrant exposes memory usage through the /metrics endpoint. See Monitoring docs.

How much memory is needed for Qdrant?