Qdrant Memory Usage Optimization
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Written by AutoGineer from the skill’s own files, not by the author
This skill provides a comprehensive framework for understanding, monitoring, and reducing memory consumption in Qdrant. It explains the distinction between resident memory and OS page cache, details how to configure memory tiers for different components like HNSW indexes and payloads, and offers actionable strategies to minimize the memory footprint, such as using quantization, vector datatypes, and disk-based storage configurations.
What it does
- Explains the difference between resident memory and OS page cache in Qdrant.
- Provides guidance on configuring memory tiers for vectors, indexes, and payloads.
- Outlines techniques to reduce RAM usage, including quantization and vector datatypes.
- Offers advice on when to move components like HNSW indexes to disk.
- Highlights the importance of headroom for segment optimization processes.
- Suggests performance optimizations for low-RAM environments, such as enabling async I/O.
When to use it
- When experiencing high memory usage or memory leaks in a Qdrant deployment.
- When nodes are crashing due to out-of-memory errors.
- When planning capacity for large-scale vector search deployments.
- When you need to optimize storage costs by offloading data to disk without sacrificing too much performance.
- When troubleshooting unexpected memory consumption that does not match initial calculations.
Advantages
- Helps prevent service crashes by managing memory tiers effectively.
- Provides specific configuration strategies for different Qdrant versions.
- Balances performance and memory usage through informed trade-offs.
- Enables efficient scaling for multi-tenant environments.
Usage examples
- “My Qdrant node is crashing with out-of-memory errors, how can I reduce RAM usage?”
- The agent will guide you through checking your current memory tier settings, suggest moving payload indexes or HNSW graphs to disk, and recommend enabling quantization to reduce the footprint of stored vectors.
- “How do I configure Qdrant to store vectors on disk to save memory?”
- The agent will explain the memory tier settings (e.g., 'cold' for 1.19+ or 'on_disk' for 1.18-) and provide the necessary configuration parameters for your specific version.
Install
Download the skill as a ZIP:
https://autogineer.com/agent-skills/qdrant/qdrant-memory-usage-optimization/downloadUnzip it into the cross-client skills folder of your project:
mkdir -p .agents/skills && unzip qdrant-memory-usage-optimization.zip -d .agents/skills
Documentation by Qdrant
Understanding memory usage
Qdrant operates with two types of memory:
Resident memory (aka RSSAnon) - memory used for internal data structures like the ID tracker, plus components that stay fully in RAM. As of Qdrant 1.20 the ID tracker has its own
memorytier (defaultpinned;cachedlets the OS evict it,coldneeds no up-front RAM), where it was always resident before. On Qdrant 1.19 or newer this is controlled per-component withmemory: pinned(e.g. quantized vectors, payload indexes); see memory tier legacy settings for deployments on version 1.18 or older.OS page cache - memory used for caching disk reads, which can be released when needed. Original vectors are normally stored in page cache, so the service won't crash if RAM is full, but performance may degrade. On Qdrant 1.19 or newer this corresponds to
memory: cached(pre-warmed into page cache at startup) ormemory: cold(lazy disk reads, not pre-warmed); on 1.18 or older it's controlled via theon_diskboolean on vectors, HNSW config, sparse vector index, and payload index. See Memory Tiers docs (available on 1.19+).
It is normal for the OS page cache to occupy all available RAM, but if resident memory is above 80% of total RAM, it is a sign of a problem.
Memory usage monitoring
Qdrant exposes memory usage through the
/metricsendpoint. See Monitoring docs.
<!-- ToDo: Talk about memory usage of each components once API is available -->
How much memory is needed for Qdrant?
Optimal memory usage depends on the use case.
For regular search scenarios, general guidelines are provided in the Capacity planning docs.
For a detailed breakdown of memory usage at large scale, see Large scale memory usage example.
Payload indexes and HNSW graph also require memory, along with vectors themselves, so it's important to consider them in calculations.
Additionally, Qdrant requires some extra memory for optimizations. During optimization, optimized segments are fully loaded into RAM, so it is important to leave enough headroom.
The larger max_segment_size is, the more headroom is needed.
When to put HNSW index on disk
Putting frequently used components (such as HNSW index) on disk might cause significant performance degradation. On Qdrant 1.19 or newer this is set with memory: cold in hnsw_config; on 1.18 or older with hnsw_config.on_disk: true.
There are some scenarios, however, when it can be a good option:
Deployments with low latency disks - local NVMe or similar.
Multi-tenant deployments, where only a subset of tenants is frequently accessed, so that only a fraction of data & index is loaded in RAM at a time.
For deployments with inline storage enabled. On Qdrant 1.20 or newer, inline storage keeps the original vectors only in the HNSW index file, so
hnsw_config.memorydecides their tier andvectors.memoryis ignored for those segments. Unless quantization has its own explicitmemory, quantized vectors arecoldwhen the HNSW index iscoldandpinnedin any other tier, so set it explicitly (for examplepinned) if the index iscoldbut you want the quantized vectors in RAM Inline storage.
How to minimize memory footprint
The main challenge is to put on disk those parts of data, which are rarely accessed. Here are the main techniques to achieve that:
Use quantization to store only compressed vectors in RAM. On Qdrant 1.20 or newer, 8-bit TurboQuant (
bits8, 4x compression) is the recommended default over scalar quantization at the same compression (use scalar for the Manhattan metric), and it doesn't rescore by default, unlikebits2,bits1_5, andbits1Quantization docsUse float16 or uint8 datatypes to reduce memory usage of vectors by 2x or 4x respectively, with some tradeoff in precision.
uint8only makes sense for vectors already quantized to 0-255. On Qdrant 1.19 or newer, the TurboQuant datatypes replace the original vectors with a compressed form (dense vectors and multivectors, not sparse):turbo4(4 bits/dimension, ~8x, from 1.19),turbo8(~4x, closer tofloat32recall, from 1.20), andturbo16(~2x, from 1.20, closer tofloat32thanfloat16). Any of them can be paired with 1-bit quantization for cheaper rescoring than pairing 1-bit quantization with full-precision vectors. A TurboQuant datatype is not TurboQuant quantization, which keeps the originals and adds a copy. Read more about vector datatypes in documentationLeverage Matryoshka Representation Learning (MRL) to store only small vectors in RAM while keeping large vectors on disk. Examples of how to use MRL with Qdrant Cloud inference: MRL docs
For multi-tenant deployments with small tenants, vectors might be stored on disk because the same tenant's data is stored together Multitenancy docs
For deployments with fast local storage and relatively low requirements for search throughput, it may be possible to store all components of vector store on disk. Read more about the performance implications of on-disk storage in the article
For low RAM environments, enable async I/O (
io_uring) for concurrent disk reads, which can significantly improve performance of on-disk storage:storage.performance.io_uring: autoon Qdrant 1.19 or newer (applies to everycoldstructure),async_scorer: trueon 1.18 or older (vector rescoring only). Requires Linux with a kernel that supportsio_uringAsync I/OKeep payloads on disk:
memory: coldis the default on Qdrant 1.19 or newer; on 1.18 or older, seton_disk_payload: trueDefault tiersConfigure payload indexes to be stored on disk:
memory: coldon Qdrant 1.19 or newer,on_disk: trueon 1.18 or older docsConfigure sparse vectors to be stored on disk:
memory: coldon the sparse vector index on Qdrant 1.19 or newer (defaults topinned),on_disk: trueon 1.18 or older docs
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