[nflug] AMD64 Debian 'Etch' Stability

[Ken Smith]

On Wed, 2008-06-11 at 09:16 -0400, Robert Wolfe wrote:
> Ok here is my question about this very thing.
> 
> We have a few VMWare Server machines (running Debian Etch) with 16GB
> of RAM.  However, NOTHING is being swapped out to the swap area.  By
> what you are saying, this is normal, correct?  I know that some
> concern was expressed recently by the power that is my boss that
> nothing (or very very little) was being swapped out.
>         
>         ______________________________________________________________
>         From: Ken Smith [mailto:kensmith at cse.Buffalo.EDU]
>         To: nflug at nflug.org
>         Sent: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 08:36:32 -0400
>         Subject: Re: [nflug] AMD64 Debian 'Etch' Stability
>         
>         As you would know but mentioning for the sake of others,
>         obviously the
>         more ram you have the less likely you will be of reaching the
>         point
>         you're forced to start paging stuff out. So in that sense swap
>         usage is
>         related to ram size but that's the only sense they're related
>         at all,
>         and how much swap space you have allocated won't play a factor
>         in
>         that. 

Yes, that's normal for a machine that doesn't wind up using all of its
physical RAM for active processes.  It will be putting all of its RAM to
good use (buffering file I/O so it needs to do less physical disk I/O)
so don't let the power that is your boss think s/he wasted money getting
too much RAM.  It's cheap enough these days that unless your machine's
needs are "higher than normal" it's reasonable to shoot for having
enough RAM that for the most part swapping isn't necessary.

-- 
                                                Ken Smith
- From there to here, from here to      |       kensmith at cse.buffalo.edu
  there, funny things are everywhere.   |
                      - Theodore Geisel |