diff --git a/helm-overrides/gke-toolshed-prd-usc1/victoria-metrics-single/custom-values.yaml b/helm-overrides/gke-toolshed-prd-usc1/victoria-metrics-single/custom-values.yaml
index f897738..2875db8 100644
--- a/helm-overrides/gke-toolshed-prd-usc1/victoria-metrics-single/custom-values.yaml
+++ b/helm-overrides/gke-toolshed-prd-usc1/victoria-metrics-single/custom-values.yaml
@@ -12,12 +12,30 @@ victoria-metrics-single:
       # the homelab's local-path, this class can be expanded later.
       size: 3Gi
 
+    # Raised from 128Mi/512Mi, which this no longer fits inside.
+    #
+    # The pod ran for weeks at the old limit and then OOM-killed in a loop
+    # the first time it was restarted — exit 137 roughly fifty seconds after
+    # a clean start, every time. Nothing had changed about its configuration;
+    # the dataset had simply grown into 3.14 billion rows, and the memory a
+    # restart needs to resume ingestion no longer fit. A long-lived pod can
+    # sit well past the limit it would need to start again, so the failure
+    # only appears the next time something restarts it.
+    #
+    # Memory here tracks active time series rather than disk, which is why
+    # shortening retentionPeriod above would not have helped: the scrape
+    # targets are the same either way, and several of them carry 40+ labels
+    # (see the maxLabelsPerTimeseries warnings in its log).
+    #
+    # Affordable: memory requests across the three nodes sit at 62%, 18% and
+    # 47%, so there is room. CPU is the constrained resource on this cluster,
+    # and this costs none.
     resources:
       requests:
         cpu: 50m
-        memory: 128Mi
+        memory: 256Mi
       limits:
-        memory: 512Mi
+        memory: 1Gi
 
     # vmui, VictoriaMetrics' built-in query UI, on the same pod and port —
     # ad-hoc PromQL only, no saved dashboards; Grafana is the real UI. Free