Configuring swap files in Windows Server 2003

[Dharamsi]

Hello friends,

I want to know which is the best way for page file placement within a Windows 2003 Server VM? I read that a page file should be on a different physical drive and 1.5 times physical memory for performance problems. Would following this advice really has effect if all virtual drives were on the same VMFS2 partition and ESX swaps shared pages?

any suggestions??

[Steve123]

Specify Virtual Memory Settings by installing the built-in System Monitor applet from the Control Panel.make changes in Virtual Memory Settings. If you have two hard disks in your computer,I recommend you to select the second hard drive for the swap file to reside on.The best approach is to set up a minimum swap file size that is larger that would ever be needed. Find out how much actual memory is used by the Swap File when you're using memory-intensive programs and set the minimum Swap File size to a higher level.

[Big Fish]

Friend just tell me the how much memory you have configured for your VM?We have VM's ranging from 256MB to 768MB, and their swapfiles are on the c: drive, and haven't had any performance issues.You could put a new .vmdk on a different LUN, but all in all, it would be quite a bit to manage.If you would have both vmdk's on the same VMFS volume I wouldn't think you would realize any performance gains over having the swap file on the same vmdk as the OS.

[Snake08]

If we say the modern servers with 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB RAM, that instructions are such craps. On a server with 32GB, if you proceed the suggestion, you'd configure your swap file to 48GB (32*1.5). And if you ever come close to actually require that much swap space, there is certainly something bigger that is wrong and should be addressed first. it was more common and you could get noticeable performance increases, but with the state of modern hardware I don't think most applications can benefit, or need it enough to spend the extra money.