PowerFlex: SVM vm.overcommit Best Practices

Summary: This article provides instructions on how to check the vm.overcommit_memory and vm.overcommit_ratio settings and how to modify the settings to match best practices.

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Instructions

To check and/or modify the SVM vm.overcommit settings, follow these steps:

1. Log in to the SVM using SSH as root

2. Run cat /etc/sysctl.conf | grep "vm.overcommit"
Ex. 
[root@sds-node logs]# cat /etc/sysctl.conf | grep "vm.overcommit"
vm.overcommit_memory = 2
vm.overcommit_ratio = 50

3, Run the following commands 
sed -i 's/vm\.overcommit_memory = .*/vm\.overcommit_memory = 2/g' /etc/sysctl.conf
sed -i 's/vm\.overcommit_ratio = .*/vm\.overcommit_ratio = 100/g' /etc/sysctl.conf
sysctl -p

Validation 
[root@sds-node logs]# cat /etc/sysctl.conf | grep "vm.overcommit"
vm.overcommit_memory = 2
vm.overcommit_ratio = 100

Repeat these steps on all SVMs in the environment to ensure that they are set to the recommended best practice settings. You do not need to place the SDS into maintenance mode to perform this operation. 
 
 

Affected Products

PowerFlex rack
Article Properties
Article Number: 000198177
Article Type: How To
Last Modified: 26 Nov 2025
Version:  7
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