Playbook

Memory Leak Identification

Systematic approach to finding and fixing memory leaks in containers.

Monitor 'container_memory_working_set_bytes' for steady upward trend.

Check if memory usage does not drop after request spikes.

Identify the specific container/process with the highest growth rate.

Capture a heap dump from the running process.

Analyze GC logs for frequent Full GCs with decreasing reclaimed space.

Use profiling tools (e.g., pprof, clinic.js, VisualVM) to find leaking objects.

Unclosed resource handles (DB connections, file descriptors).

Static collections or caches that grow indefinitely.

Long-running event listeners that are never removed.

Check Working Set Memory (K8s)

kubectl top pod <pod-name> --containers

Find process Memory map

pmap -x <pid> | sort -rk 3 | head -n 20

Node.js Heap Snapshot

node --inspect index.js
# Use Chrome DevTools to capture snapshot