# Are bins that are not indexed stored in memory?

**URL:** <https://discuss.aerospike.com/t/are-bins-that-are-not-indexed-stored-in-memory/878>\
**Category:** Feature Discussion\
**Created:** [January 30, 2015, 8:32pm UTC](https://discuss.aerospike.com/t/are-bins-that-are-not-indexed-stored-in-memory/878 "2015-01-30T20:32:44Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![joe99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/898d66/32.png) [@joe99](https://discuss.aerospike.com/u/joe99)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2015, 8:32pm UTC](https://discuss.aerospike.com/t/are-bins-that-are-not-indexed-stored-in-memory/878/1 "2015-01-30T20:32:44Z")

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Hi,

I am going through the server memory requirements and I believe only primary key and indexes drive the memory requirements. Is that correct?

Thanks.

Regards,

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**Author:** ![meher](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/discuss.aerospike.com/meher/32/1644_2.png) [@meher](https://discuss.aerospike.com/u/meher)\
**Post date:** [February 1, 2015, 6:24am UTC](https://discuss.aerospike.com/t/are-bins-that-are-not-indexed-stored-in-memory/878/2 "2015-02-01T06:24:29Z")

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Thanks for your question.

For the use cases where data is not stored in memory you are almost correct. Let me explain a bit more:

1- Data not in memory. See details here for [storage configuration](http://www.aerospike.com/docs/operations/configure/namespace/storage/). Basically, the assumption I am making is that you have data-in-memory false (or not set at all as default is false) and you are not using storage-engine memory either of course.

2- By default, Aerospike does not store the primary key, but rather only a hash of it using the RIPEMD-160 algorithm wich will take a key of any length and return a 20 bytes digest. Even if the primary key is specified (through client policy) to be stored, it will not be stored in the index.

Having gone over the previous 2 points, yes, only primary index (fixed 64 bytes per record) and potential secondary indices will drive memory requirements. See [details here](https://www.aerospike.com/docs/operations/plan/capacity/) for storage capacity planning.