Physical and Virtual memory

[Jason C]

Hey everyone,

I was backing up a series of sites to subdomains on my site and realized my physical memory was getting a bit hi. I also realized that my virtual memory was not being touched. I contacted my provider and they were helpful, basically saying don't worry about it for now and if you start maxing it out to the point that things are working, contact us again.

Good enough answer for support really, but I'd like to understand it all a bit better. I understand that physical memory is pretty much RAM. I also found a thread saying you can reset it as a reseller, but the person asking about it didn't have the right permissions.

Also, I'm really unsure about anything with the virtual memory. Is this another form of RAM-ish memory? What does it do? How can it best be utilized? Etc. Any information or even resources would be greatly appreciated.


Thanks in Advance,

Jason

 

[ModServ]

Virtual Memory Usage
Virtual memory corresponds to the amount of memory processes can allocate for an account. Hitting your memory limit will cause "out of memory" errors.

Physical Memory Usage
Physical memory corresponds to the amount of real memory actually used by your processes. Same thing, once you've hit the maximum physical limit memory errors will persist.

Source: http://www.crucialwebhost.com/kb/resource-usage/

 

[cPanelMichael]

Hello

You may also find the following thread helpful:

https://forums.cpanel.net/threads/memory-usage-apparently-higher-than-expected.308861/#post-1277421

Thank you.