---
title: Excessive CPU or memory consumption
source: https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/infrastructure/prometheus-integrations/troubleshooting/excessive-cpu-or-memory-consumption
---

## Problem

You have installed the [Prometheus OpenMetrics integration](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/integrations/prometheus-integrations/install-configure-openmetrics/install-update-or-uninstall-your-prometheus-openmetrics-integration) for Docker or Kubernetes, and it consumes too much memory or CPU.

## Solution

When running the integration in a huge cluster scraping hundreds of targets, CPU and memory consumption will increase, and the number of workers could affect `scrape_duration`.

For example, a Prometheus OpenMetrics integration consumes 2.5 CPU and 700Mb of RAM because:

-   It scrapes `800 targets`, exposing `1000 timeseries` each.
-   Each one has a latency of `150ms` with a `scrape_duration` of 30 seconds.

To reduce resource consumption:

1.  Update the integration to the latest available image.
2.  Reduce harvest time by lowering `emitter_harvest_period`. (The default value is `1s`, and the interval cannot be smaller than `200ms`.) Since metrics are sent more often, memory consumption is reduced.
3.  Collect metrics less frequently by increasing `scrape_duration` to reduce both memory consumption and CPU usage.
4.  Reduce the number of workers to reduce both memory consumption and CPU usage. Scraping will slow down and could exceed `scrape_duration.` To do so:

    -   Update the integration to the latest version available of the image.
    -   Decrease `worker_threads` from the default value of `4` to your preferred value.