TLDR Dev · ARTICLES & TUTORIALS

POSTGRESQL AND THE OOM KILLER: WHY WE USE STRICT MEMORY OVERCOMMIT

ubicloud.com10 min read

Summary from the TLDR Dev newsletter

Strict memory overcommit in PostgreSQL is necessary for preventing catastrophic out-of-memory (OOM) kills, as it allows the database to handle memory allocation failures gracefully without impacting all connections. A kernel bug in Ubicloud's product temporarily disrupted this configuration, showing the importance of careful management of memory limits to guarantee system stability while running PostgreSQL in production environments.