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Please note that this doesn't apply all the same to servers. I have servers running with 16 GB of RAM and 16 GB of swap (because I simply can't even stop them to add RAM), and even then about twice a year they run out of memory and the OOM killer does its dirty job. However without swap they used to simply crash and burn, so swap is fine in this case.



The only thing I can possibly imagine that a server can do with 16GB of swap is leaking garbage like a sieve and then getting the garbage swapped out. On an incredibly local basis, yes, this might be a better idea than not having swap, but as a generalized reason for servers to have swap it's terrible. If that's not what's happening I am all ears as to what the situation really is, but I'm sure it'll be something very unusual; in general if your server has even the slightest need for performance it can't use swap.




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