OpenVZ kernel handle memory exactly like vanilla one. By default it will use as many memory as possible to cache data and file. So if you look at memory usage with a simple free -m command inside a container, and pick the wrong line, you can conclude that you’re lacking RAM when you not.
If you want to have a better idea of memory usage you can check the content of the /proc/meminfo:
# cat /proc/meminfo | egrep 'MemTotal|MemFree|Slab|SReclaimable|Buffers'
MemTotal: 24485028 kB
MemFree: 949880 kB
Buffers: 7601704 kB
Slab: 4725268 kB
SReclaimable: 4658232 kB
Buffers, and SReclaimable are use respectively for I/O buffering and file content caching and can be reallocated to processes needing RAM on-demand. Therefore this memory is in fact ‘free’.
Now one interesting thing about OpenVZ is that you can limit this file caching behavior by container, using the dcachesize variable, like this:
# vzctl set --dcachesize 268435456:295279001 --save Here we limit the VM to use 256Mb for file caching. Note that you must use the ubc container’s memory management schema not the standard SLM:
# vzctl set --save --slmmode ubc