memory performance question 11.0 64 bit

[Penni Nussbaum]

Thierry,
Why wouldn't I be able to boot, because primary swap is not large enough? When I unmirrored, I assumed I would be able to boot, but would later posssibly have the same problems I had before the I unmirrored swap. The system was able to boot withthe 1 gig of swap.
This system was not complaining until I upgraded it to 11.0 and the DBA upgraded Oracle. The first time we had them emory problem, I told the application owners they needed to purchase more memory. They came back at me and wanted to know why 2 gig wasn't enough, and if Oracle uses 1 gig what is the other 1 gig used for. That's when I posted my question.
One application owner is reviewing the quote while the other one is fighting the possible future, claiming we just need to tune the system. Adding disks (for swap) is currently not doable as this system is attached to an emc symmetric that is out of disk. So, if I do add memory, swap will not be able to be increased any more than it is.

[Thierry Poels_1]

Hi,
if you want to boot from your mirrored boot disk you need :
1. the boot blocks (pvcreate -B & mkboot)
2. /stand
3. followed by primary swap (here you will fail, primary swap will be on the original boot disk!!)
4. followed by / (root dir)

regards,
Thierry.

[Penni Nussbaum]

So now I have a problem. Should I keep swap unmirrored and risk the system not being able to boot , but have the application owners off my case, or do I re-mirror. I think I would rather re-mirror and hope they order memory soon.

[Servio Cabrera]

The break of the mirror, does not impede to boot, in a normal situation, only if the primary boot disk fails, you will have a problem, in that case, you will have to boot in maintenance mode and "lvlnboot" the swap lv, and you will be ok. Of course is not nice, but it is only temporary. Adding more memory will not completely solve the problem, You HAVE to add more swapspace, you can have a SMART Enclousure, with the integraded SCSI bus, for extra swapspace (and fast to get it)

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Mr. Farrelly:
You are absolutely correct about having sufficient dump space; the part that I failed to mention is that I always configure a separate dump space at 1X total memory. I consider this a much wiser use of disk than the old 2X or 3X RAM - which increases to 4X or 6X with mirrors - especially for disk that is never used.