[c-nsp] SUP720's memory, looking at options..

[Jon Lewis]

On Mon, 4 Jul 2016, Howard Leadmon wrote:

>  I knew with the 720-3BXL's I was running, that eventually the TCAM would
> become an issue, but it seemed like I still had a little bit of breathing
> room left.   Then I saw the chatter here about the RAM on the RP exhausting
> before the TCAM, so went peeking at the switch after reading an earlier
> thread.     Sure enough, though TCAM was starting to get full, to my
> surprise when I looked at memory, it was at 92%, so even closer than the
> TCAM by far to exhaustion.
>
> I know I can't just up the RAM on the board, so that now leads me to wonder
> what are reasonable options to resolve this before it becomes a very real
> and big problem.   First let me say, compared to many here we are small
> guys, we have a limited budget, and our 6509 has served us well for a great
> many years, I think it's about to pass the 5yr uptime mark.   We have 2-3
> full feeds as uptime is important, and we also peer at the Equinix IX, so
> have a bunch of additional peering sessions.

Some of the software versions for the 6500 have had BGP related memory 
leaks, and if you've got an uptime of 5yrs, that means you're not exactly 
running recent code, and have had a lot of time for memory to get 
misplaced.  I no longer have access to a 6500 with full feeds, so I don't 
know if 3 full feeds + an IX should be running you out of memory.  An 
upgrade/reboot might be worth a try though.  I'd stay in whatever major 
version you're in though...not try jumping to a much later version that 
might be even more memory hungry.

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  Jon Lewis, MCP :)           |  I route
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