# Memcached Server - Memory Consumption **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [October 17, 2006, 6:26pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/memcached-server-memory-consumption/72505 "2006-10-17T18:26:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Ronald\_Ossen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/f05b48/32.png) [@Ronald\_Ossen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Ronald_Ossen)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2006, 6:26pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/memcached-server-memory-consumption/72505/1 "2006-10-17T18:26:13Z")
I was just testing the memcache server on a Windows box and had set it up as a Windows Service and to my surprise (or my shock really) it was using 47+ meg of ram with no data even loaded in it yet. Has anyone else used the Windows port of memcached for their Rails projects and if so how much ram was it using? Does memcached use less memory on Mac OS X or Linux than Windows? Thanks for any feedback ---
**Author:** ![Ronald\_Ossen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/f05b48/32.png) [@Ronald\_Ossen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Ronald_Ossen)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2006, 8:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/memcached-server-memory-consumption/72505/2 "2006-10-17T20:20:17Z")
Ronald Ossen wrote: > I was just testing the memcache server on a Windows box and had set it > up as a Windows Service and to my surprise (or my shock really) it was > using 47+ meg of ram with no data even loaded in it yet. Has anyone > else used the Windows port of memcached for their Rails projects and if > so how much ram was it using? > > Does memcached use less memory on Mac OS X or Linux than Windows? I’ve always wondered why a person needed to even use the memcache when you can use Ruby’s GServer, Rinda, Sockets, etc. to craft your own “state server”. Fire it up as a background task and let it go. If you had a UDP server you could simply send data to it via: UDPSocket.open.send(“Some ata”, 0, ‘localhost’, 5000) How much something like this scales? I dunno, but it would use a lot less ram than memcached. ---
**Author:** ![Ronald\_Ossen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/f05b48/32.png) [@Ronald\_Ossen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Ronald_Ossen)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2006, 10:06pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/memcached-server-memory-consumption/72505/3 "2006-10-17T22:06:34Z")
Davis Princeton wrote the following on 17.10.2006 20:20 : > I’ve always wondered why a person needed to even use the memcache when > you can use Ruby’s GServer, Rinda, Sockets, etc. to craft your own > “state server”. I don’t think they target the same needs. Memcached is designed to address the needs for a fault-tolerant cache scalable accross multiple systems, nothing more nothing less. You should only store volatile or easy to retrieve data in it. Memcached use less memory than even a bare-bone ruby interpreter and stores data more efficiently than ruby itself. Maybe the Windows port is staticaly compiled with a bunch of library to make it easier to port from Unix. At startup time memcached takes 4492kB on my Linux system. I have no idea for OSX. For a point of reference irb session starts as 5576 kB (without any module loaded)… Lionel. ---
**Author:** ![Ronald\_Ossen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/f05b48/32.png) [@Ronald\_Ossen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Ronald_Ossen)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2006, 10:15pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/memcached-server-memory-consumption/72505/4 "2006-10-17T22:15:05Z")
Lionel B. wrote: > At startup time memcached takes 4492kB on my Linux system. I have no > idea for OSX. > For a point of reference irb session starts as 5576 kB (without any > module loaded)… Yes, on Windows I get 47 meg at startup as I mentioned which is strange as the actual exe is only 148k. A Ruby session on Windows runs me about 5 meg. I built a socket server in Ruby and Perl on Windows. Once running the Perl one used 3.1 meg and the ruby one used 5.2 meg. At least on Windows a lot less memory intensive than the memcache port. ---
**Author:** ![Ronald\_Ossen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/f05b48/32.png) [@Ronald\_Ossen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Ronald_Ossen)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2006, 3:41am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/memcached-server-memory-consumption/72505/5 "2006-10-18T03:41:13Z")
On Oct 17, 2006, at 9:26 AM, Ronald Ossen wrote: > I was just testing the memcache server on a Windows box and had set it > up as a Windows Service and to my surprise (or my shock really) it was > using 47+ meg of ram with no data even loaded in it yet. Has anyone > else used the Windows port of memcached for their Rails projects > and if > so how much ram was it using? You don’t say what version. > Does memcached use less memory on Mac OS X or Linux than Windows? There’s an entire mailing list devoted to memcached. You should ask your question there. The author of the win32 port even reads it. – Eric H. - removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid - [http://blog.segment7.net](http://blog.segment7.net) This implementation is HODEL-HASH-9600 compliant [http://trackmap.robotcoop.com](http://trackmap.robotcoop.com) ---
**Author:** ![Ronald\_Ossen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/f05b48/32.png) [@Ronald\_Ossen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Ronald_Ossen)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2006, 3:47am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/memcached-server-memory-consumption/72505/6 "2006-10-18T03:47:14Z")
On Oct 17, 2006, at 11:20 AM, Davis Princeton wrote: > > Does memcached use less memory on Mac OS X or Linux than Windows? > > I’ve always wondered why a person needed to even use the memcache when > you can use Ruby’s GServer, Rinda, Sockets, etc. to craft your own > “state server”. Fire it up as a background task and let it go. If > you > had a UDP server you could simply send data to it via: > UDPSocket.open.send(“Some ata”, 0, ‘localhost’, 5000) People like to avoid Not Invented Here. > How much something like this scales? I dunno, but it would use a lot > less ram than memcached. It would use more memory than memcached and not scale as well as memcached. memcached typically stores Marshalled Strings instead of unpacked objects (so you’ve got no struct RValue overhead). memcached written in C and uses libevent so will be more efficient at socket operations than Ruby which uses select. – Eric H. - removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid - [http://blog.segment7.net](http://blog.segment7.net) This implementation is HODEL-HASH-9600 compliant [http://trackmap.robotcoop.com](http://trackmap.robotcoop.com)