# Diagnosing regular periodic high memory usage
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/diagnosing-regular-periodic-high-memory-usage/140493
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [February 3, 2020, 5:32pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/diagnosing-regular-periodic-high-memory-usage/140493 "2020-02-03T17:32:47Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@downey](https://meta.discourse.org/u/downey)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2020, 5:32pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/diagnosing-regular-periodic-high-memory-usage/140493/1 "2020-02-03T17:32:47Z")
Using cloud provider’s standard system monitoring tools, we’re getting alerts about the same time most days because memory utilization was over 80% for 10+ minutes continually. This state continues for maybe 30 to 60 minutes or more (the duration seems to vary by day) starting right around the same time.
- **Anyone seen something like this that might have an idea where to start looking?** Or, alternatively …
- **Is there any easy way to look at scheduled jobs within the application stack that might be happening at this pattern and a culprit?**
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2020, 5:36pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/diagnosing-regular-periodic-high-memory-usage/140493/2 "2020-02-03T17:36:29Z")
Backups? Especially if you’ve got lots of uploads. You can look at `/sidekiq`.
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### Author:  [@downey](https://meta.discourse.org/u/downey)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2020, 5:38pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/diagnosing-regular-periodic-high-memory-usage/140493/3 "2020-02-03T17:38:08Z")
Nope, backups were my first idea too. Backups (both Discourse and cloud provider) are only happening weekly. (Which I should probably change but not until I get this ghost tracked down!) 🤔
So I took a look at [https://discourse.example.org/sidekiq/scheduler](https://discourse.example.org/sidekiq/scheduler) and it seems that all the jobs there are on a period rotation and not necessarily at a certain time of day. Does anyone know if that’s right? If so, is that period based on the startup time of the app container?
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### Author:  [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2020, 5:49pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/diagnosing-regular-periodic-high-memory-usage/140493/4 "2020-02-03T17:49:23Z")
It’s almost bound to be a big or bunch of big queries. Dashboard re-calc and Top recalc come to mind as two possible hogs.
80% is not all bad though, means you aren’t over-stressing the system (and going into swap), but utilisation is efficient and you are making good use of your (virtual) hardware?
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### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [December 26, 2023, 6:12am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/diagnosing-regular-periodic-high-memory-usage/140493/5 "2023-12-26T06:12:57Z")