[tor-relays] Question: RAM requirement for an exit relay

[Dmitrii Tcvetkov]

On Sat, 12 Dec 2020 20:37:22 +0100
Olaf Grimm <jeep665 at posteo.de> wrote:

> Hello!
> 
> I would like to activate a local DNS resolver with unbound at the exit
> relays, but I am concerned about the RAM size with 1GB. On an example
> machine I have 2GB RAM and the exit relay occupies 400MB at 22.9 MiB/s
> according to the metrics.
> 
> Does anyone have experience with such values? My smaller exit relays
> only have 1GB of RAM.
> 
> Well, there is still the problem that simply trying it out is not
> possible. If I overrun the RAM and it comes to SWAP activities, then
> already on a local machine almost no access was possible. With a VPS
> this is a no-go.
> 
> Kind regards!
> Olaf

Hi,

My small exit relay 988625BFD9E9B23B35C590250407486F28FF8FFC runs on 1
GiB RAM VPS with local unbound recursive resolver. 

Memory usage looks like this:
Memory: Real: 470M/861M act/tot Free: 110M Cache: 177M Swap: 317M/1049M

In my expirience swap in general is a virtue, of course it might hinder
the overall expirience on specific workloads.

Also usually there is a way to access VPS if it has became
unresponsive, like VNC. IMO you should simply try if you have
non-network access to the VPS.