# Display memory usage in bytes instead of percentage **URL:** \ **Category:** Metrics\ **Created:** [June 22, 2020, 12:30pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/display-memory-usage-in-bytes-instead-of-percentage/238086 "2020-06-22T12:30:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![wolph](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/wolph/32/70818_2.png) [@wolph](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/wolph)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2020, 12:30pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/display-memory-usage-in-bytes-instead-of-percentage/238086/1 "2020-06-22T12:30:29Z")
For the Observability-\>Metrics screen the memory usage is currently shown as a percentage. While that might still be useful for the Hosts, for both Kubernetes Pods and Docker Containers that's pretty useless. So I'm wondering how I can change the "Memory usage" metric to display the usage in bytes instead of percent. I know I can add the metric, but the next time I open the dashboard that metric has dissappeared again so that's not too useful ---
**Author:** ![simianhacker](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/simianhacker/32/3383_2.png) [@simianhacker](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/simianhacker)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2020, 5:38pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/display-memory-usage-in-bytes-instead-of-percentage/238086/2 "2020-06-22T17:38:31Z")
I’m not sure which version of the stack your using but we added custom metrics in 7.7+. You can use this to create a custom metric and save it with your view. ---
**Author:** ![wolph](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/wolph/32/70818_2.png) [@wolph](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/wolph)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2020, 8:33pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/display-memory-usage-in-bytes-instead-of-percentage/238086/3 "2020-06-23T20:33:56Z")
I'm using 7.8.0 using the official k8s documentation with the stock configuration and no special configuration. I honestly didn't see the save/load buttons since they're all the way at the bottom and nearly all buttons are at the top. That does offer a workaround, but it would still be useful to change the default. The current default is completely useless for docker/kubernetes since you nearly always have multiple dockers/pods running on a single system. So a memory percentage makes no sense for those. ---
**Author:** ![simianhacker](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/simianhacker/32/3383_2.png) [@simianhacker](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/simianhacker)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2020, 9:22pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/display-memory-usage-in-bytes-instead-of-percentage/238086/4 "2020-06-23T21:22:53Z")
@sorantis Thoughts? ---
**Author:** ![phillipburch](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/phillipburch/32/49330_2.png) [@phillipburch](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/phillipburch)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2020, 12:38pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/display-memory-usage-in-bytes-instead-of-percentage/238086/5 "2020-06-24T12:38:40Z")
Would it make sense to see the current memory usage as compared to the reserved memory or the memory limit for that container? I think it's useful to have a percentage so that you easily can know how close you are to going OOM. ---
**Author:** ![wolph](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/wolph/32/70818_2.png) [@wolph](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/wolph)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2020, 1:19pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/display-memory-usage-in-bytes-instead-of-percentage/238086/6 "2020-06-24T13:19:54Z")
That would certainly be better but has the problem that (at least in my case) many containers don't have any memory reservations configured. For me personally having absolute memory usage would be most useful. ---
**Author:** ![phillipburch](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/phillipburch/32/49330_2.png) [@phillipburch](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/phillipburch)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2020, 1:40pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/display-memory-usage-in-bytes-instead-of-percentage/238086/7 "2020-06-25T13:40:17Z")
Got it. I agree there is value in showing the raw value for memory usage. We can explore this to see if there's room to show both. Thanks for the feedback! ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2020, 1:40pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/display-memory-usage-in-bytes-instead-of-percentage/238086/8 "2020-07-23T13:40:19Z")
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