title: Spark Driver Memory Configuration
body: <p>I am getting the following error in my Spark application:-</p>
  
  <pre><code>Container [pid=7115,containerID=container_1516699670283_0001_02_000001] is running beyond physical memory limits. Current usage: 1.4 GB of 1.4 GB physical memory used; 3.4 GB of 6.9 GB virtual memory used. Killing container.
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I am currently using <code>m3.2x large EC2</code> instance (<a href="https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/</a>) as my driver resource.</p>
  
  <p>I have a couple of questions here:</p>
  
  <p>1) If I don't specify <code>spark.driver.memory</code>, is there any default value that is used?</p>
  
  <p>2) In this case, what memory of the driver should I specify?</p>