Kswapd reclaims all cache and continues to consume CPU time even after there's lot of free memory

Solution Verified - Updated -

Issue

  • Kswapd consumes increased %sys CPU usage for long period of time.
  • Kswapd reclaims all Cache and still continues to run.
  • Kswapd is constantly swapping processes out, even while there is lot of free memory.

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
  • optionally transparent huge pages (THPs) enabled
  • usually with vxdmp module

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