Re: Swap Space needed on Solaris 8,10

Greg wrote:

 > Most of the documentation you see about setting swap space for an
 > Oracle box states that swap should be equal to RAM.  With the size of
 > RAM now days getting to 64Gig or more, is this really a requirement?
 > Is there a good standard to follow?
 >
 > I have also read that Sun allocates swap at the same time and amount as
 > it allocates RAM for a process.  Is this still true with Solaris 8 and
 > 10?  If so, I can see why you might set swap equal to RAM.
 >

Greg wrote:

> It almost sounds like that the swap file size (on disk) should be the
> size of the RAM that is used by the OS, thus giving you back that space
> to make swap equal to RAM. Assuming that all RAM can be used as swap.
> Does that sound true?
>
> Greg Peterson
>

A good starting point would be to use the default or recommended setting for swap that popped up when you installed the OS. It's usually not an issue unless you increase (decrease) physical memory in a previously configured system.

I don't have enough direct experience with 64GB RAM systems to know whether the "rules" for swap sizing scale up linearly. For that level of investment in hardware, I would ask the vendor and expect a pretty good answer.

-Mark Bole Received on Fri Aug 12 2005 - 19:58:59 CDT