use spare disk space as ram

[Red Squirrel]

Is there a way to use disk space to make the system think its regular ram? I want to take say, 10 gigs, and allowcate it as "ram" so that I have that much to play with when creating VMs in VMware server. I'm sure the performance wont be that great, but as long as it can use the real ram first and only start using the disk when the real one is full, it would at least allow me to have more VMs running. I would most likely dedicate a drive just for this. Maybe even make a raid 0 with a couple flash drives or something. (though theres probably no benifit to this, it would all bottleneck at the USB bus anyway)

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

How much RAM do you have in your system? Wouldn't a couple of flash drives in RAID 0 be more expensive that more RAM? If you are using that many VMs, I'd stand up a server with a ton of RAM. What kind of budget are you working with?

 

[trexpesto]

that's what swap is! Whoa and watch out if you google "man swap"!!!!!! (I am on windows)

from : http://www.linux.com/feature/121916
The Linux 2.6 kernel added a new kernel parameter called swappiness to let administrators tweak the way Linux swaps. It is a number from 0 to 100. In essence, higher values lead to more pages being swapped...
.
.
The default value for swappiness is 60. You can alter it temporarily (until you next reboot) by typing as root:

echo 50 > /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

 

[xSauronx]

Originally posted by: trexpesto
that's what swap is! Whoa and watch out if you google "man swap"!!!!!! (I am on windows)

from : http://www.linux.com/feature/121916
The Linux 2.6 kernel added a new kernel parameter called swappiness to let administrators tweak the way Linux swaps. It is a number from 0 to 100. In essence, higher values lead to more pages being swapped...
.
.
The default value for swappiness is 60. You can alter it temporarily (until you next reboot) by typing as root:

echo 50 > /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

swappiness?

did steve colbert write the man page?

 

[Nothinman]

Is there a way to use disk space to make the system think its regular ram?

The closest thing you'll get is swap space.

that's what swap is!

Technically not really. You can store pages in swap to make more room in memory but pages can't be directly allocated from swap so you still have to page them back in to do anything with them which means it's only so useful.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo
How much RAM do you have in your system? Wouldn't a couple of flash drives in RAID 0 be more expensive that more RAM? If you are using that many VMs, I'd stand up a server with a ton of RAM. What kind of budget are you working with?

Thats the thing I'm trying to save money. this is an older machine only has 3 ram slots and they're full. It's old DDR1 ram which is hard to get and expensive nowdays. Flash drives are super cheap, you can even get like 3 in a pack sometimes for even cheaper. Though don't think there would be a benifit to raiding USB devices, as the bus would be a massive bottleneck.

I was looking at a new mobo/cpu/ram combo for only $350 with capacity for 8 gigs so thats my option if this does not work out, but I want to try this first if its even possible. The server only has 1.5 gigs of ram.

And yeah I'm aware of swap and I'll ned it regardless, but what I'm needing here is something to simulate real ram. I don't know if its even possible or close to viable. (maybe it would just be way too slow)

 

[trexpesto]

Perhaps a new T105 for $338 shipped with 4 Gb of 800 MHz DDR2 ECC RAM and 'free'DVD drive' from Bamacre's link in this Hot Deals thread and sell your old one. Dual Opty 1.8 default config.
With only space for 2 drives, Dell only offers raid 1 or 0 with their cards. How much and what kind of RAM are you needing?

 

[Brazen]

There is an option in VMWare Server to allow virtual ram to be swapped to disk, which does allow you to run more vms. However, I've tried this and it causes your vms to run rediculously slow.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah think I'll try that option if I start running into issues. I just want to see how often I'll be using this server and if its worth upgrading, then I'll probably get new mobo, cpu and ram. I already added it to my cart on tigerdirect, and comes up to 350ish. It's upgradable to 8 gigs as I used 2GB modules and theres 4 slots.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: RedSquirrel
Yeah think I'll try that option if I start running into issues. I just want to see how often I'll be using this server and if its worth upgrading, then I'll probably get new mobo, cpu and ram. I already added it to my cart on tigerdirect, and comes up to 350ish. It's upgradable to 8 gigs as I used 2GB modules and theres 4 slots.

I found that I get better performance by setting VMWare to keep all vm RAM in real RAM, and then assigning less RAM to each vm. With linux guests anyway, it works out much better to let the guest OS manage what goes into RAM and what gets swapped to disk. Most of my vms only have 48mb of RAM assigned to them.

For my home needs, if I decided to purchase hardware (instead of using an old hand-me-down), I would get one of those Everex PCs with the Via processor, or get the "gOS developers kit" ($60) which is the processor and motherboard that comes in that Everex computer. It's cheap, it uses very very little power, and it would be more than enough for my home server.