NetWorker: High memory usage of process nsrmmdbd

The OS is killing the nsrmmdbd process. This results in impacts to the NetWorker server, such as failed backups.

The NetWorker server daemon.raw reports the following:

• Linux: /nsr/logs/daemon.raw
• Windows (Default): C:\Program Files\EMC NetWorker\nsr\logs\daemon.raw
• NetWorker: How to use nsr_render_log to render .raw log files

71193 12/13/25 15:46:34 0 0 0 841355584 29252 0 myserver nsrd NSR info NetWorker Daemons Warning: nsrmmdbd received signal 9 (SIGKILL)

On Linux servers, the /var/log/messages file reports "Out of Memory" messages. This results in oom-kill to stop nsrmmbdb

Dec 13 15:46:33 myserver kernel: oom-kill:constraint=CONSTRAINT_NONE,nodemask=(null),cpuset=/,mems_allowed=0,global_oom,task_memcg=/,task=nsrmmdbd,pid=2079,uid=0
Dec 13 15:46:33 myserver kernel: Out of memory: Killed process 2079 (nsrmmdbd) total-vm:25889764kB, anon-rss:24201136kB, file-rss:0kB, shmem-rss:0kB
Dec 13 15:46:34 myserver kernel: oom_reaper: reaped process 2079 (nsrmmdbd), now anon-rss:0kB, file-rss:0kB, shmem-rss:0kB

On Windows servers, the System and Application Event logs may report similar error messaging. 

The nsrmmdbd process reports a high memory usage that increases over the time. 

When the system is running low on memory, OOM kills the process.

The NetWorker Performance Optimization Planning Guide details requirements for nsrmmdbd sizes of 1GB and more. See chapter: Optimizing nsrmmdbd memory usage. NetWorker documentation is available through: Support for NetWorker | Manuals & Documents 

Also, ensure that the server has adequate compute resources for the environment size. See chapter: Memory requirements for the NetWorker server and NetWorker Management Console

The MMDB_SQLITE parameter and other system kernel parameter best practices are documented in the following article: NetWorker: Best practices for networking configuration

Example: a medium installation for a virtual server. The system is installed with 8 vCPUs and 32 GB. 

The top command can be used to check high memory consumption:

$ top -b -n1 -o VIRT | head -10
top - 16:37:02 up 96 days,  9:43,  1 user,  load average: 0.22, 0.18, 0.18
Tasks: 233 total,   1 running, 232 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu(s):  1.5 us,  0.0 sy,  0.0 ni, 98.5 id,  0.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
MiB Mem : 32086.33+total,  819.785 free, 28642.18+used, 3852.422 buff/cache
MiB Swap:    0.000 total,    0.000 free,    0.000 used. 3444.148 avail Mem

  PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU  %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND
 4479 root      20   0 21.372g 0.019t  10320 S 0.000 63.21 333:05.33 nsrmmdbd
29053 nsrtomc+  20   0 13.205g 1.046g      0 S 0.000 3.338 292:31.41 jsvc
30201 root      20   0 5897400 1.324g    160 S 0.000 4.224 772:19.41 nsrjobd

A run of top all 8 h shows the increase:

PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU  %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND
12-01-2026 16:37:02    4479 root      20   0 7494208 4.984g  17528 S 0.000 15.91  19:59.54 nsrmmdbd
13-01-2026 00:37:02    4479 root      20   0 9155648 6.781g  17528 S 0.000 21.64  35:29.59 nsrmmdbd
13-01-2026 08:37:02    4479 root      20   0 9853.0m 7.975g  17528 S 0.000 25.45  51:37.20 nsrmmdbd
13-01-2026 16:37:01    4479 root      20   0 10.153g 8.706g  15928 S 12.50 27.78  72:34.67 nsrmmdbd
14-01-2026 00:37:01    4479 root      20   0 11.302g 0.010t  15928 S 0.000 31.94  87:09.14 nsrmmdbd
14-01-2026 08:37:01    4479 root      20   0 11.747g 0.010t  15940 S 0.000 32.79 103:40.44 nsrmmdbd
14-01-2026 16:37:02    4479 root      20   0 12.716g 0.011t  15884 S 0.000 36.56 123:03.84 nsrmmdbd
15-01-2026 00:37:01    4479 root      20   0 13.997g 0.012t  15884 S 0.000 39.81 139:23.88 nsrmmdbd
15-01-2026 08:37:02    4479 root      20   0 14.466g 0.013t  15764 S 0.000 43.15 156:23.82 nsrmmdbd
15-01-2026 16:37:02    4479 root      20   0 14.974g 0.013t  15976 S 0.000 43.20 175:53.13 nsrmmdbd
16-01-2026 00:37:02    4479 root      20   0 15.411g 0.013t  15680 S 0.000 44.04 192:25.13 nsrmmdbd
16-01-2026 08:37:02    4479 root      20   0 15.521g 0.014t  15680 S 0.000 44.57 208:31.53 nsrmmdbd
16-01-2026 16:37:01    4479 root      20   0 16.685g 0.015t  10644 S 0.000 47.91 227:23.48 nsrmmdbd
17-01-2026 00:37:01    4479 root      20   0 17.747g 0.016t  10128 S 0.000 51.22 243:27.54 nsrmmdbd
17-01-2026 08:37:01    4479 root      20   0 18.677g 0.017t  10112 S 0.000 54.56 260:42.09 nsrmmdbd
17-01-2026 16:37:01    4479 root      20   0 19.802g 0.018t  10496 S 0.000 57.97 279:54.55 nsrmmdbd
18-01-2026 00:37:01    4479 root      20   0 19.911g 0.018t  10248 S 0.000 58.30 296:37.80 nsrmmdbd
18-01-2026 08:37:02    4479 root      20   0 21.083g 0.019t  10348 S 0.000 62.94 313:42.43 nsrmmdbd
18-01-2026 16:37:02    4479 root      20   0 21.372g 0.019t  10320 S 0.000 63.21 333:05.33 nsrmmdbd

For additional information about troubleshooting process resource utilization, see:

• NetWorker: How to use the nsradmin command-line utility to manage NetWorker resources
• NetWorker: Troubleshooting High Memory or CPU usage by Process