A technique is introduced for applying multi-level caching to deploy various types of physical memory to service captured memory calls from an application. The various types of physical memory can include local volatile memory (e.g., dynamic random-access memory), local persistent memory, and/or remote persistent memory. In an example embodiment, a user-space page fault notification mechanism is used to defer assignment of actual physical memory resources until a memory buffer is accessed by the application. After populating a selected physical memory in response to an initial user-space page fault notification, page access information can be monitored to determine which pages continues to be accessed and which pages are inactive to identify candidates for eviction.