# Meaning of ram.current in \_cat/nodes **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Created:** [September 10, 2016, 4:00am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/meaning-of-ram-current-in--cat-nodes/60205 "2016-09-10T04:00:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![vin01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc8723/32.png) [@vin01](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/vin01)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2016, 4:00am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/meaning-of-ram-current-in--cat-nodes/60205/1 "2016-09-10T04:00:15Z")
In my elasticsearch cluster of 3 nodes, following is the memory usage as reported by \_cat/nodes/ : - > name ram.current > es01 61.9gb > es02 62.5gb > es03 52.4gb and following is the memory usage of elasticsearch process as checked by "top" : - > es01 : - VIRT : 217 g, RES : 34g , SHR : 2.0g > Total memory usage of system :- Mem: 62.867G total, 61.625G used, 10.784G cached ,538.797M buffers It is similar for all the 3 systems, resident memory in use by elasticsearch is about 34 gb, i am using a max heap size limit of 30 gb. Overall memory usage of systems is close to what is showed by ram.current, so does it show the memory usage of the system es is running on? or the memory usage of es process? Seems like the first to me, however [cat nodes API | Elasticsearch Guide [8.11] | Elastic](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/cat-nodes.html) "Used total memory" which is not clear. ---
**Author:** ![javanna](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/javanna/32/4698_2.png) [@javanna](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/javanna)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2016, 8:38am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/meaning-of-ram-current-in--cat-nodes/60205/2 "2016-09-12T08:38:14Z")
If you want to double check how much heap is used, there is also a section that is specific to heap. Ram info includes heap and off heap data. Lucene relies on file system cache for its data structures, plus if you use doc\_values those go off-heap as well. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2017, 10:21pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/meaning-of-ram-current-in--cat-nodes/60205/3 "2017-07-05T22:21:15Z")