Re: Swap configuration for 16GB of RAM, 8 cores

[michael@estone.ca]

Quoting "agenkin@gmail.com" <agenkin@gmail.com>:

> I am installing two servers, each with 16GB of RAM, two quad-core Xeon
> processors, and a SATA hard drive.  The machines will be compute
> servers, meaning lots of concurrently logged in users, each running
> an assortment of jobs, and various long-running processes.  The jobs
> will be
> vastly dissimilar with regards to using the memory, disk, and CPU, and
> to
> their run time, so the configuration should be generic, general
> purpose.
>
> What are the current best practices with regards to swap partitions?
> Is it
> better to create one big, or several smaller swap partitions?  Is the
> rule
> of thumb still RAM*2 for the total size?
>
> We are running Debian 4.0/Etch with the stock -i686-bigmem kernel.

Awesome, you have tons of kick ass electronic hardware.
16 Gigs of ram.... Dualy Quad Xeons...
and only one hard drive?  LOL
With that much hard core gear, I wonder if swap at RAM*1 or RAM*2 or  
RAM*.5 would make much of difference?
I would be interested to know if it does, if you ever find out whether  
one out performs another.
Have you considered using the AMD64 port?, or perhaps you have some  
custom 32 bit stuff that can only run on x86?

Mike