I'm used to having guaranteed and 'burst' memory on a VPS. Just started setting up my first one with a whole extra GB of swap space.
Can I do anything with that?
I know you cannot use it 'too much' since it's accessing the disk.
Any good use for swap space, or just hope it's not needed too often?
Really just hope it's not needed. RAM is far far quicker than swap. Your server should use swap if it runs out of RAM.
however it does prevent your server grinding to a halt if it's just over the RAM limit
Swap is used for when you are hitting your limit, so it's good to at least have half of your actual memory in swap usually. (If you have 2 gb of memory have 1gb of swap) You will hardly ever touch it but when you need it, it saves your butt.
Just besides a server, Swap Space is disc based memory, which is slow, but how about static programs ? or programs that don't need super speed ?
Maybe a text editor could be loaded in it or the console ?
I don't know of a way to force things to load in the swap partition when ram is available. Basically it's there for if you get a high load of traffic(for a server anyway) that your server won't go down completely. If you find your self using it on a daily/weekly basis I would say it's time to add more ram.
Thanks*4
What I thought: So many MB's and I cannot use them.
I'm sure you could hack into it and use it.