Container is running beyond memory limits

You should also properly configure the maximum memory allocations for MapReduce. From this HortonWorks tutorial:

[...]

Each machine in our cluster has 48 GB of RAM. Some of this RAM should be >reserved for Operating System usage. On each node, we’ll assign 40 GB RAM for >YARN to use and keep 8 GB for the Operating System

For our example cluster, we have the minimum RAM for a Container (yarn.scheduler.minimum-allocation-mb) = 2 GB. We’ll thus assign 4 GB for Map task Containers, and 8 GB for Reduce tasks Containers.

In mapred-site.xml:

mapreduce.map.memory.mb: 4096

mapreduce.reduce.memory.mb: 8192

Each Container will run JVMs for the Map and Reduce tasks. The JVM heap size should be set to lower than the Map and Reduce memory defined above, so that they are within the bounds of the Container memory allocated by YARN.

In mapred-site.xml:

mapreduce.map.java.opts: -Xmx3072m

mapreduce.reduce.java.opts: -Xmx6144m

The above settings configure the upper limit of the physical RAM that Map and Reduce tasks will use.

To sum it up:

1. In YARN, you should use the mapreduce configs, not the mapred ones. EDIT: This comment is not applicable anymore now that you've edited your question.
2. What you are configuring is actually how much you want to request, not what is the max to allocate.
3. The max limits are configured with the java.opts settings listed above.

Finally, you may want to check this other SO question that describes a similar problem (and solution).

There is a check placed at Yarn level for Virtual and Physical memory usage ratio. Issue is not only that VM doesn't have sufficient physical memory. But it is because Virtual memory usage is more than expected for given physical memory.

Note : This is happening on Centos/RHEL 6 due to its aggressive allocation of virtual memory.

It can be resolved either by :

1. Disable virtual memory usage check by setting yarn.nodemanager.vmem-check-enabled to false;

2. Increase VM:PM ratio by setting yarn.nodemanager.vmem-pmem-ratio to some higher value.

References :

https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HADOOP-11364

http://blog.cloudera.com/blog/2014/04/apache-hadoop-yarn-avoiding-6-time-consuming-gotchas/

Add following property in yarn-site.xml

 <property>
   <name>yarn.nodemanager.vmem-check-enabled</name>
    <value>false</value>
    <description>Whether virtual memory limits will be enforced for containers</description>
  </property>
 <property>
   <name>yarn.nodemanager.vmem-pmem-ratio</name>
    <value>4</value>
    <description>Ratio between virtual memory to physical memory when setting memory limits for containers</description>
  </property>