If the memory usage can increase 10x while this is not reflected in the assumptions, both the measurements and the assumptions are flawed To give more context:

If the memory usage can increase 10x while this is not reflected in the assumptions, both the measurements and the assumptions are flawed To give more context: I run many copies of a daemon with known memory leaks, on machines each with a load close to 0.7 and about 200M of free ram left. I consider that an heavy load. This approach restarts one of the copies of the daemon when its own leaks become dangerous to the rest of the system. It is not perfect, but good enough when the numbers are measured at peak. The 200Mb free RAM are all the extra leeway I care to leave.