diff --git a/doc/admin/observability/alerts.md b/doc/admin/observability/alerts.md
index 9e03c4c5422..eeefc3faf35 100644
--- a/doc/admin/observability/alerts.md
+++ b/doc/admin/observability/alerts.md
@@ -6578,12 +6578,17 @@ Generated query for warning alert: `max((sum by (code) (increase(src_zoekt_reque
 
 - If you are running out of memory map areas, you could resolve this by:
 
+    - Enabling shard merging for Zoekt: Set SRC_ENABLE_SHARD_MERGING="1" for zoekt-indexserver. Use this option
+if your corpus of repositories has a high percentage of small, rarely updated repositories. See
+[documentation](https://docs.sourcegraph.com/code_search/explanations/search_details#shard-merging).
     - Creating additional Zoekt replicas: This spreads all the shards out amongst more replicas, which
 means that each _individual_ replica will have fewer shards. This, in turn, decreases the
 amount of memory map areas that a _single_ replica can create (in order to load the shards into memory).
-    - Increase the virtual memory subsystem`s "max_map_count" parameter which defines the upper limit of memory areas
-a process can use. The exact instructions for tuning this parameter can differ depending on your environment.
-See https://kernel.org/doc/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt for more information.
+    - Increasing the virtual memory subsystem`s "max_map_count" parameter which defines the upper limit of memory areas
+a process can use. The default value of max_map_count is usually 65536. We recommend to set this value to 2x the number
+of repos to be indexed per Zoekt instance. This means, if you want to index 240k repositories with 3 Zoekt instances,
+set max_map_count to (240000 / 3) * 2 = 160000. The exact instructions for tuning this parameter can differ depending
+on your environment. See https://kernel.org/doc/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt for more information.
 - More help interpreting this metric is available in the [dashboards reference](./dashboards.md#zoekt-memory-map-areas-percentage-used).
 - **Silence this alert:** If you are aware of this alert and want to silence notifications for it, add the following to your site configuration and set a reminder to re-evaluate the alert:
 
diff --git a/monitoring/definitions/zoekt.go b/monitoring/definitions/zoekt.go
index 2485e0b3e1e..5d7b2037d41 100644
--- a/monitoring/definitions/zoekt.go
+++ b/monitoring/definitions/zoekt.go
@@ -830,12 +830,17 @@ func Zoekt() *monitoring.Dashboard {
 							NextSteps: `
 								If you are running out of memory map areas, you could resolve this by:
 
+								    - Enabling shard merging for Zoekt: Set SRC_ENABLE_SHARD_MERGING="1" for zoekt-indexserver. Use this option
+								if your corpus of repositories has a high percentage of small, rarely updated repositories. See
+								[documentation](https://docs.sourcegraph.com/code_search/explanations/search_details#shard-merging).
 								    - Creating additional Zoekt replicas: This spreads all the shards out amongst more replicas, which
 								means that each _individual_ replica will have fewer shards. This, in turn, decreases the
 								amount of memory map areas that a _single_ replica can create (in order to load the shards into memory).
-								    - Increase the virtual memory subsystem's "max_map_count" parameter which defines the upper limit of memory areas
-								a process can use. The exact instructions for tuning this parameter can differ depending on your environment.
-								See https://kernel.org/doc/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt for more information.
+								    - Increasing the virtual memory subsystem's "max_map_count" parameter which defines the upper limit of memory areas
+								a process can use. The default value of max_map_count is usually 65536. We recommend to set this value to 2x the number
+								of repos to be indexed per Zoekt instance. This means, if you want to index 240k repositories with 3 Zoekt instances,
+								set max_map_count to (240000 / 3) * 2 = 160000. The exact instructions for tuning this parameter can differ depending
+								on your environment. See https://kernel.org/doc/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt for more information.
 							`,
 						},
 					},