Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!cmcl2!phri!roy
From: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: How much paging is "a lot?"
Message-ID: <3818@phri.UUCP>
Date: 26 Jun 89 19:12:06 GMT
Organization: Public Health Research Institute, NYC, NY
Lines: 20


	I've been keeping an eye on our 4-Mbyte vax-11/750, trying to
figure out if it would really help things if we added more memory.  The
idea is that if you do a lot of paging, you need more memory, but how do
you know what "a lot" of paging is?  For example, right now I've got a Sun
perfmeter running looking at paging on the 750 (we run rstatd on the vax)
and it just flipped over to the 64 scale.  Is 64 (1k) pages/second "a lot"?
Over the past few minutes, it's been at or near 0 for perhaps half the
time, with a few peaks up in the 30-50 range.  Is that "a lot"?

	Other than performing the experiment of buying more memory and
seeing what happens, how does one know if you need more or not?  I'm
inclined to try the negative control experiment by taking one or two of the
4 1-Mbyte cards in there now off line and seeing what happens, but I
suspect people would lynch me.
-- 
Roy Smith, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016
{allegra,philabs,cmcl2,rutgers,hombre}!phri!roy -or- roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu
"The connector is the network"