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Fault Injection
Experiments

Memory Experiment

The Memory experiment consumes a set amount of memory or as much as is available (whichever is lower) and holds onto it for the duration of the experiment. The experiment allocates blocks of memory with malloc until it reaches the desired amount, deallocating the memory with free upon experiment completion.

Options

ParameterFlagRequiredDefaultVersionDescription
MB-m intFalse0.0.1The number of megabytes to allocate.
GB-g floatFalse0.50.0.1The number of gigabytes to allocate.
Percentage-p <0-100>False1002.8.30The percentage of total memory to allocate.
Allocation Strategy-s absolute | totalFalseabsolute2.24.0absolute tells Gremlin to consume the full amount requested, total tells Gremlin to consume only that which brings the system up to the target utilization.
Length-l intFalse600.0.1The length of the experiment (seconds).

Troubleshooting

When running a memory experiment on Linux hosts or Kubernetes, the Gremlin process may be terminated by the system's Out of Memory Manager (OOMKiller). Please see this knowledge base article for additional information.