What is a SWAP Space?
My RHEL6 OS is showing below swappiness values.
cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
60
"Swappiness" is a property for the Linux kernel that changes the balance between swapping out runtime memory, as opposed to dropping pages from the system page cache. Swappiness can be set to values between 0 and 100 inclusive. A low value means the kernel will try to avoid swapping as much as possible where a higher value instead will make the kernel aggressively try to use swap space. The default value is
Linux divides its physical RAM (random access memory) into chucks of memory called pages. Swapping is the process whereby a page of memory is copied to the pre-configured space on the hard disk, called swap space, to free up that page of memory. The combined sizes of the physical memory and the swap space is the amount of virtual memory available.
Swapping is necessary for two important reasons. First, when the system requires more memory than is physically available, the kernel swaps out less used pages and gives memory to the current application (process) that needs the memory immediately. Second, a significant number of the pages used by an application during its startup phase may only be used for initialization and then never used again. The system can swap out those pages and free the memory for other applications or even for the disk cache.
However, swapping does have a downside. Compared to memory, disks are very slow. Memory speeds can be measured in nanoseconds, while disks are measured in milliseconds, so accessing the disk can be tens of thousands times slower than accessing physical memory. The more swapping that occurs, the slower your system will be. Sometimes excessive swapping or thrashing occurs where a page is swapped out and then very soon swapped in and then swapped out again and so on. In such situations the system is struggling to find free memory and keep applications running at the same time. In this case only adding more RAM will help.
Linux has two forms of swap space: the swap partition and the swap file. The swap partition is an independent section of the hard disk used solely for swapping; no other files can reside there. The swap file is a special file in the filesystem that resides amongst your system and data files.
How big should my swap space be?
Many people follow an old rule of thumb that your swap partition should be twice the size of your main system RAM. This rule is nonsense. On a modern system, that's a LOT of swap, most people prefer that their systems never swap. You don't want your system to ever run out of RAM+swap, but you usually would rather have enough RAM in the system so it doesn't need to swap.
Red hat recommends setting as follows for RHEL 5:
The reality is the amount of swap space a system needs is not really a function of the amount of RAM it has but rather the memory workload that is running on that system. A Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 system will run just fine with no swap space at all as long as the sum of anonymous memory and system V shared memory is less than about 3/4 the amount of RAM. In this case the system will simply lock the anonymous and system V shared memory into RAM and use the remaining RAM for caching file system data so when memory is exhausted the kernel only reclaims pagecache memory.
Considering that:
1) At installation time when configuring the swap space there is no easy way to predetermine the memory a workload will require
2) The more RAM a system has the less swap space it typically needs, a better swap space
Systems with 4GB of ram or less require a minimum of 2GB of swap space
Systems with 4GB to 16GB of ram require a minimum of 4GB of swap space
Systems with 16GB to 64GB of ram require a minimum of 8GB of swap space
Systems with 64GB to 256GB of ram require a minimum of 16GB of swap space
Note: Swap space will just keep operation running for a while on heavy duty servers by swapping process.It is possible to run a Linux system without a swap space, and the system will run well if you have a large amount of memory -- but if you run out of physical memory then the system will crash, as it has nothing else it can do, so it is advisable to have a swap space, especially since disk space is relatively cheap.
The key question is how much? Older versions of Unix-type operating systems (such as Sun OS and Ultrix) demanded a swap space of two to three times that of physical memory. Modern implementations (such as Linux) don't require that much, but they can use it if you configure it. A rule of thumb is as follows: 1) for a desktop system, use a swap space of double system memory, as it will allow you to run a large number of applications (many of which may will be idle and easily swapped), making more RAM available for the active applications; 2) for a server, have a smaller amount of swap available (say half of physical memory) so that you have some flexibility for swapping when needed, but monitor the amount of swap space used and upgrade your RAM if necessary; 3) for older desktop machines (with say only 128MB), use as much swap space as you can spare, even up to 1GB.
The Linux 2.6 kernel added a new kernel parameter called swappiness to let administrators tweak the way Linux swaps. It is a number from 0 to 100. In essence, higher values lead to more pages being swapped, and lower values lead to more applications being kept in memory, even if they are idle.
My RHEL6 OS is showing below swappiness values.
cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
60
"Swappiness" is a property for the Linux kernel that changes the balance between swapping out runtime memory, as opposed to dropping pages from the system page cache. Swappiness can be set to values between 0 and 100 inclusive. A low value means the kernel will try to avoid swapping as much as possible where a higher value instead will make the kernel aggressively try to use swap space. The default value is
60, and for most desktop systems, setting it to 100 may affect the overall performance, whereas setting it lower (even 0) may improve interactivity.
In short:
vm.swappiness = 0 - it will swap only to avoid an out of memory condition
vm.swappiness = 60 - default value
vm.swappiness = 100 - it will swap aggressively
###################################################################To temporarily set the swappiness in Linux, write the desired value (e.g. 10) to /proc/sys/vm/swappiness using the following command, running as root user:
vm.swappiness = 0 - it will swap only to avoid an out of memory condition
vm.swappiness = 60 - default value
vm.swappiness = 100 - it will swap aggressively
###################################################################To temporarily set the swappiness in Linux, write the desired value (e.g. 10) to /proc/sys/vm/swappiness using the following command, running as root user:
echo 10 > /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
###################################################################
Permanent changes are made in /etc/sysctl.conf via the following configuration line
vm.swappiness = 10
###################################################################
Thanks,
Nishith N.Vyas
Thanks,
Nishith N.Vyas
