Limit the memory used by Universal Forwarder

[rmcdougal]

We are currently evaluating the splunk universal forwarder as a means to collect system logs from our PC's but have run into an issue. The universal forwarder consumes between 40 and 50 MB of memory on our machines whereas, the existing Snare agent uses only around 3 MB. Is there anyway to limit this memory footprint?

[gkanapathy]

Unfortunately, it's not going to be much smaller than that. The way to limit memory consumption is to make sure that your inputs are as limited as possible, e.g., point at single files or small directories with a few files and no subdirectories. You can reduce some memory by: shrinking maxQueueSize in outputs.conf to maybe 100 KB (vs a default of 500 KB), which should reduce memory usage by maybe 1-1.5 MB; and shrinking the queueSize setting in inputs.conf to maybe 100 KB (also from a default of 500 KB), which will only help if you're using the AD, registry, or PerfMon collectors, and will save maybe another 1 to 1.5 MB depending how many of those you're using.