NodeJs caps memory usage on r6i.xlarge instance (32GB RAM) at 16GB

Question

Hello. We are running our NodeJs application which creates considerable memory pressure. We acquired a large server, however, NodeJs caps memory usage at 16GB regardless of settings (`--max-old-space-size=30000`). We tried different instances, with docker (AWS Linux) or without (Ubuntu 22), but the cap stays the same. It is a 64-bit version of Node (otherwise, it would have capped at ~4GB). We've tried Node versions 18.15, 18.19, 20.11. Interestingly, locally on a dev-machine (MacOS, 16GB RAM) it manages to occupy 18GB+ (although it takes nearly forever because of swapping) and doesn't crash.
The error we are observing on AWS server is
```
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::bad_alloc'
  what():  std::bad_alloc
```
Any hint is appreciated that would point to a new direction in this investigation

Jagan · Answer

Inspect your Node.js application for memory leaks. Even if you increase the memory limit, a memory leak can eventually lead to crashes and use  memory profiling tools to understand how your application is using memory and identify potential areas for optimization.

NodeJs caps memory usage on r6i.xlarge instance (32GB RAM) at 16GB

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