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Note: This article applies only to PowerProtect Data Manager deployed by vCenter OVA. For the Linux package-based deployments, contact Dell Support or your Linux OS support provider for further assistance. Intermittent UI/CLI Unresponsiveness: The UI and CLI become unavailable. The VM may remain reachable only by the ping command. High Memory Utilization: Memory utilization remains consistently high, typically ranging from 81% to 100%. Swap Exhaustion: Swap usage ( %swpused ) reaches 100%, as observed in System Activity Reporter (SAR) logs. This condition leads to performance degradation, and the system stops responding. # sar -S -f sar_file 03:00:13 PM kbswpfree kbswpused %swpused kbswpcad %swpcad 03:01:00 PM 0 8388604 100.00 461920 5.51 03:02:03 PM 0 8388604 100.00 461920 5.51 03:03:00 PM 0 8388604 100.00 461944 5.51 03:04:14 PM 0 8388604 100.00 461944 5.51 03:06:00 PM 0 8388604 100.00 461512 5.50 03:07:01 PM 0 8388604 100.00 461624 5.50 SAR Log Location and Usage: SAR files are located in: /var/log/brs/sa File names follow the format saYYYYMMDD, where: YYYY = year MM = month DD = day Older SAR files are compressed in .xz format. Decompress them using: xz -d <file>.xz After decompression, the files can be reviewed using the sar command. Detecting Swap Exhaustion Events: Run the following script to identify timestamps where swap utilization reached 100%: # Login as admin, then switch to rootsu -cd /var/log/brs/sa xz -d sa2*.xz 2>/dev/nullfor f in sa2*; do sar -S -f "$f" | awk -v file="$f" ' /%swpused/ {col=0; for (i=1;i<=NF;i++) if ($i=="%swpused") col=i} col && $col+0 == 100 { print "Swap 100% on", file, "at time:", $1 } ' done Example output if there are swap full events: Swap 100% on sa20260527 at time: 03:09:24 Swap 100% on sa20260527 at time: 03:09:29 Swap 100% on sa20260527 at time: 03:12:19 Swap 100% on sa20260527 at time: 03:12:31 Swap 100% on sa20260527 at time: 03:13:29 Swap 100% on sa20260527 at time: 03:15:00 SAR Data Gaps During System Stops Responding: SAR typically collects data every minute. When the system stops responding and unable to run SAR properly, gaps in timestamps may appear: 03:09:24 PM 0 8388604 100.00 454396 5.42 03:09:29 PM 0 8388604 100.00 454356 5.42 03:12:19 PM 0 8388604 100.00 431884 5.15 03:12:31 PM 0 8388604 100.00 430136 5.13 03:13:29 PM 0 8388604 100.00 358308 4.27 03:15:00 PM 0 8388604 100.00 279884 3.34 These gaps indicate periods where the system was resource-constrained or unresponsive.
According to the PowerProtect Data Manager Deployment Guide, many PowerProtect Data Manager services are memory-intensive. When physical memory is fully used, these services begin to use swap space. If swap space is exhausted, the system can become unresponsive. By design, PowerProtect Data Manager is deployed with a minimum of 36 GB RAM and 8 GB of swap space. 40 GB, if Cloud Disaster Recovery is enabled. Figure 1 : PowerProtect Data Manager Memory optimization suggested for vCenter deployment. High memory utilization (81–100%) alone is not an issue in Linux systems, as memory is used for caching and performance optimization. The issue occurs under sustained memory pressure when physical memory demand exceeds available capacity and the system relies on swap. When swap reaches 100%, the system becomes resource-constrained, causing performance degradation and UI/CLI unresponsiveness, while ping may still work. The 8 GB swap space is intended only as a temporary safety buffer and is not sized for sustained workload usage. Increasing swap is not recommended, as it does not address the underlying memory pressure and may further degrade performance.
Increase VM memory: Shut down the PowerProtect Data Manager VM. Raise physical RAM from the default 36 GB to 48 GB or 64 GB. If Cloud Disaster Recovery is enable, increase the RAM from 40 GB to 52 GB or 68 GB. If memory pressure persists, scale further up to 96 GB as needed. Monitor swap usage: After the RAM increase, continue to monitor swap usage, there are a few options: Check the SAR output to confirm %swpused remains low. This contains the historical data, for example, the swap utilization over a busy month-end weekend. Check the system real time utilization with the below commands: free -g cat /proc/meminfoExample output: ppdm:~ # free -g total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 62 34 27 0 1 27 Swap: 7 0 7 ppdm:~ # cat /proc/meminfo MemTotal: 65244220 kB MemFree: 28791740 kB MemAvailable: 29278764 kB Buffers: 33036 kB Cached: 1186960 kB SwapCached: 0 kB Active: 296008 kB Inactive: 35018912 kB Active(anon): 88576 kB Inactive(anon): 34208072 kB Active(file): 207432 kB Inactive(file): 810840 kB Unevictable: 80 kB Mlocked: 80 kB SwapTotal: 8388604 kB SwapFree: 8388604 kB Dirty: 380 kB Writeback: 0 kB AnonPages: 34088200 kB Mapped: 1107000 kB Shmem: 201724 kB KReclaimable: 119436 kB Slab: 418124 kB SReclaimable: 119436 kB SUnreclaim: 298688 kB KernelStack: 119616 kB PageTables: 115884 kB NFS_Unstable: 0 kB Bounce: 0 kB WritebackTmp: 0 kB CommitLimit: 41010712 kB Committed_AS: 39333304 kB VmallocTotal: 34359738367 kB VmallocUsed: 173656 kB VmallocChunk: 0 kB Percpu: 103936 kB HardwareCorrupted: 0 kB AnonHugePages: 26771456 kB ShmemHugePages: 0 kB ShmemPmdMapped: 0 kB FileHugePages: 0 kB FilePmdMapped: 0 kB CmaTotal: 0 kB CmaFree: 0 kB HugePages_Total: 0 HugePages_Free: 0 HugePages_Rsvd: 0 HugePages_Surp: 0 Hugepagesize: 2048 kB Hugetlb: 0 kB DirectMap4k: 1034048 kB DirectMap2M: 58734592 kB DirectMap1G: 9437184 kB ppdm:~ # Caution: Manual adjustment of swap space is not recommended because swap is not intended for sustained application workload.
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