[rhelv6-beta-list] My first experiences with RHEL6 beta

[Jonathan Billings]

On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 08:22:27AM +0800, John Summerfield wrote:
> Jonathan S Billings wrote:
> > Swap improves performance on a system, due to the way the Linux memory
> > manager works.  Swap partitions are faster than swap files, and less
> > likely to be lost, corrupted or removed by accident.
> 
> The performance claim has not been true for some time,  I think as far 
> back as 2.4.

The performance of a swap file vs. a swap partition is similar, I
admit I was unaware of that.  However, the performance of the linux
memory manager IS improved by having available swap.  

> RAM for a typical SOHO system costs less than the time to acquire it and 
> install it. The difference in cost is simply not relevant.

When I spoke of memory being expensive compared to disk, I was
speaking of how resources are limited on a system hosting one or more
virtual machines.  It's easy to host several fully populated virtual
machines on commodity hardware, however, it's more difficult to run
several virtual machines using the typical amount of memory.  I should
have made that more clear.
-- 
Jonathan Billings <jsbillin at umich.edu>