Re: [Xen-users] Swap: create or not?

[Henrik Langos <hlangos-xen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'd argue against swap in domU if you can avoid it.

If your application needs that much more RAM you'll be better off
giving that VM more RAM instead.

If your application doesn't give a damn about memory usage, it 
will be the first on the oom-killer's menu. -> Problem solved. ;-)


If you allow the application to go deeply into swap, it 
will place some heavy IO load on your machine and thus bog down 
- every other application on that domU AND 
- every other domU including their applications AND
- your dom0 (very nasty if you need your dom0 to do IO to a SAN).

So, I'd say avoid swap if you can, and if you can't than keep it
to a minimum (lets say 256M).

About balooning: AFAIK this only means taking memory away from dom0.
DomU's have a fixed amount of memory, don't they?

Balooning for dom0?

I'd say: Avoid it like the plague! It will bog down your dom0 horribly
and the only reason I can see for using it, would be on a desktop where
ocassionally you use a xen domU.

For a server I strongly suggest following the best practices:
http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenBestPractices

cheers
-henrik

On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 02:18:48PM +0300, George Shuklin wrote:
> Yes, swap is almost mandatory - it will save machine from state 'very
> low mem'. From my research (mostly on XCP) this state may cause
> unstability for some kernels, causing OOM_killer to kill many processes
> (sometimes including init - means kernel panic). Swap reducing chances
> to get to this state.
> 
> Second very important point: ballooning. When ballooning (inflating
> balloon = reduce mem) occur, if kernel have no free address space it can
> invoke OOM_killer. Swap will save in case slightly wrong values for
> balloon.
> 
> Ð ÐÑ., 11/02/2011 Ð 10:12 +0000, Mauro ÐÐÑÐÑ:
> > When creating a DomU I've always set a swap.
> > Do you think it is necessary to have a swap in the DomU?
> > 
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> 
> 
> 
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