Temporary files: RAM or disk? [LWN.net]

Temporary files: RAM or disk?

Posted Jun 4, 2012 21:17 UTC (Mon) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)
In reply to: Temporary files: RAM or disk? by bronson
Parent article: Temporary files: RAM or disk?

Web servers, mail servers, file servers, directory servers, dns servers, Jabber servers, bittorrent servers, memcached, database servers, reverse proxy servers, load balancers, etc. etc. Almost all share a work profile that doesn't really benefit from swap.
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So, I'm very curious, what is this somewhat common, swap-friendly type of server that I'm missing?

You don't seem to be following the conversation. I said many servers have important data that is neither server software nor backed by a filesystem. I know I don't have to give you examples of those; many of your examples above use plenty of malloc memory. That was to cast doubt on the claim, which I said is way too general to make, that for most servers the important data is server software and other files.

It still might be true, but I'm a long way from being convinced any of us has a wide enough purview of the computer industry to know that the servers with working data are in the minority.

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Temporary files: RAM or disk?

Posted Jun 5, 2012 5:59 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

Obviously what I said was an oversimplification -- it's only 2 sentences. It still provides a decent mental model to answer the OP's question. If you'd like to improve on it, please do. There's plenty of room.

And, I have a reasonable view of the data centers that I've worked in... Most servers I've seen have avoided swapping. Some merely ignore it because it's redundant (Apache, nginx), and some go to unbelievable lengths to avoid it (Oracle). Very few actually embrace it (Varnish). That's just my experience. Again, if you've seen otherwise, please do share.