High Swap Load

[talence]

I m having High swap used in the server. Actually the one where i m having high swap used is a vps. How can i clear the swap files in CentOS 4.2?

Thanks.

Regards

[James]

It's just pure lack of memory. Perhaps a memory leak, or simply overload of your VPS of what it can handle.

Clearing swap isn't going to help you if it's an overload. Because it will happen again very soon. To clear, restart VPS.

[ingfina]

How much RAM do you have and what do you run on it? ouput of 'top -c' and 'ps waux' is usually a good start.

[talence]

It's just pure lack of memory. Perhaps a memory leak, or simply overload of your VPS of what it can handle.

Clearing swap isn't going to help you if it's an overload. Because it will happen again very soon. To clear, restart VPS.

Actually my vps is not having high load. About 1 - 2 server load. Ram usage is about 60% but swap usage is raising day by day. Now it is 86%

And thanks for that suggestion. When i restart my vps it reduce the swap usage, but within 6-8 hours it get again high swap usage. Is that mean i need memory upgrade?

Regards

[James]

Actually my vps is not having high load. About 1 - 2 server load. Ram usage is about 60% but swap usage is raising day by day. Now it is 86%

And thanks for that suggestion. When i restart my vps it reduce the swap usage, but within 6-8 hours it get again high swap usage. Is that mean i need memory upgrade?

Regards

Yes, or take the memory hogging account/s off the server.

[NetCafe]

When your memory runs off, swapping comes in.

[talence]

When your memory runs off, swapping comes in.

I m confused now. I contacted with my DC and they cleared my swap memory. Now it is 47%, i didn't upgrade memory even.

Note: I m housed with SAVVIS.

I m just curious to know how this can be done.

Regards

[NetCafe]

Swap is your hdd space and nothing to do with physical ram being "reboot" or what nots.

When your ram is used up, the system begings to use swap, like virtual memory in windows?

[James]

Again, clearing swap only temporarily fixed the problem, when the processes come back you'll face the same situation again. Only a matter of time.

Ram 60 percent / Swap 50 percent is still too high to my taste.

[talence]

Again, clearing swap only temporarily fixed the problem, when the processes come back you'll face the same situation again. Only a matter of time.

Ram 60 percent / Swap 50 percent is still too high to my taste.

the system begings to use swap, like virtual memory in windows?

Correct. Same thing, and it is certainly ease to know that we dont add virtual memories like RAM Lol. But actually Swap Memory depends on the swap files reduction of coursely. (Same like Windows) Again, currently running process make the swap memory load. So its quite like if you get low swap memory used, but high physical memory used, no matter, your server will not be hung easily. But high swap makes problem.

Ram 60 percent / Swap 50 percent is still too high to my taste.

Its still not high. As if you use 95% of your RAM and getting 50% swap your server will not hang, some process might get stopped because of lack memory. But if you get high swap like 80-90% then it is risky of course.

Again, clearing swap only temporarily fixed the problem, when the processes come back you'll face the same situation again. Only a matter of time.

Swap files depend on the cache system of your server softwares and the sites you are using. Usually blogs, forums, CMS lots people use caches. Like Vb uses more cache then IPB and PHPBB. On Blog Wordpress uses high. All this cache when get saved then load the swap. And its a big process depends on your HDD space as Netcafe said. If you are having 40% swap and getting swap cleared, then you certainly for about 25-30 days will be free may be your server having Vb or Wordpress hosted.

Regards