[plug] large swap space and raid array

[Craig Ringer]

On Thu, 2004-01-29 at 23:47, Craig Ringer wrote:
> On Thu, 2004-01-29 at 23:37, Denis Brown wrote:
> > Okay, split up the swap into different partitions across different disks!
> > Err... yes, but here I have all my "disk eggs" in one RAID array "basket."
> > So I have this gigantic SCSI drive staring out at me, all /dev/sda of it.
> 
> That's actually going to be a problem.

Sorry. I should perhaps say "that, depending on how much swapping you
actually do, could be a performance problem."

> > Given the sheer amount of physical memory, is a
> > smaller swap a safe choice (ie.2GB?)
> 
> Maybe ... but there's no harm in having lots anyway. 

BTW, my server at work has 2GB of RAM, and it's barely touched swap in
it's history. I set up sensible ulimits for users, so a runaway process
can't thrash the swap, and it works wonderfully. Of course, I'm working
with many light tasks, not a few heavyweight memory hogs so it's a
rather different situation.

BTW - just out of curiosity - what's the hardware spec on the machine?

Craig Ringer