Ways to utilize RAM

[Lucid1010]

I have 16GB of system RAM. Currently, about 2GB is in use (1GB by the system + 1GB by ZFS). I feel like it's a waste to leave so much RAM unused. Are there any good ways to utilize the free RAM?

[Monviech (Cedrik)]

Enable more services that use RAM. Some of the worst offenders in RAM usage is Squid.

Enabling all rulesets with os-opnproxy almost requires 16GB RAM or the load fails.

[pfry]

Reserving space for sessions ("Firewall: Settings: Advanced" -> "Miscellaneous" -> "Firewall Maximum States") (hit the info button on that one; modifying it is not usually beneficial) or aliases ("Firewall: Settings: Advanced" -> "Miscellaneous" -> "Firewall Maximum Table Entries") are possibilities. For aliases, have a look at "Firewall: Aliases", at the usage bar directly to the right of the title. GeoIP (e.g.) will eat a very large amount of RAM.

You can also eat a bunch at "System: Settings: Miscellaneous" -> "Disk / Memory Settings (reboot to apply changes)". These are somewhat specialized, and should be applied only as needed, with care.