I am currently experiencing an issue with my MariaDB server where it is excessively using swap memory, leading to significant performance degradation. I am not sure why the swap memory usage is so high, and I am worried about the impact of this “memory bomb” on my server’s performance. Here are the details of my current setup and the steps I have taken so far:

Server Setup:
Database Server: MariaDB 10.11

• Physical Memory (RAM): [used / total] 13 Gi / 15 Gi

• Swap Space: [used / total] 5.7 Gi / 8.0 Gi

• Operating System: Rocky Linux 8.8 (Green Obsidian)
  Observations:

• Excessive Swap Usage: The top command shows a high amount of swap memory usage.
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• Swap memory use (using /proc/$pid/status)
  Name=mariadbd – Swap used: 5268960 KB

• Current Memory Status (using SHOW STATUS LIKE ‘Innodb_buffer_pool%’;):
  Innodb_buffer_pool_pages_data: 713855
  Innodb_buffer_pool_bytes_data: 11695800320
  Innodb_buffer_pool_pages_dirty: 12714
  Innodb_buffer_pool_bytes_dirty: 208306176
  Innodb_buffer_pool_pages_flushed: 17316310
  Innodb_buffer_pool_pages_free: 1
  Innodb_buffer_pool_pages_made_not_young: 52897922
  Innodb_buffer_pool_pages_made_young: 11348673
  Innodb_buffer_pool_pages_misc: 0
  Innodb_buffer_pool_pages_old: 263492

• innodb local memory
  max_connections | 5000
  read_buffer_size | 131072
  read_rnd_buffer_size | 262144
  sort_buffer_size | 2097152
  join_buffer_size | 262144
  thread_stack | 299008
  Threads_connected | 981

Questions:
Why is my MariaDB server using so much swap memory?
Are there specific configurations or settings I should check or adjust to mitigate swap usage?
Could there be memory leaks or inefficient memory usage in my current setup?
What best practices should I follow to optimize memory usage and avoid swap memory dependency?