Reduce monerod memory (RAM) usage

Question

Is there a way to reduce the memory (RAM) amount used by monero daemon? I didn't see any option regarding that.

Answer 1

On Linux you could use limits (e.g. prlimit et al).

For example, launching monerod like: prlimit --rss=N monerod, will limit the resident set size of the launched daemon to N bytes. Lots of other options in this QA as well.

Presumably there's something similar on Windows.

Note however, by reducing RAM the process can use, you'll just end up swapping. Also note, beware of making the common mistake of misinterpreting usage reported by some tool, this is because the Monero blockchain is stored in virtual memory and often either the tool or the viewer doesn't understand how to display / interpret this. For example, some tools will show Monero using 100% of RAM when in fact it may only using 5%!

Answer 2

Monerod indeed uses a good deal of memory. On my small server, it is sitting on 1.1g of RAM..

PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU  %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND                                                                     
50878 root      20   0   26.6g   1.1g 171644 S   0.7  56.0  74:35.46 monerod