This is what Oracle says about swap for 11gR2. The comment about subtracting ISM is not
correct. A simple test shows that ISM does consume swap (even if it's not DISM). Think
about what happens when a memory segment is created (before it goes to ISM), if someone
happens to attach in non-ISM mode and when everyone detaches from the segment and it
ceases to be ISM). In the first and last stage swap space is *required* and the VM system
reserves the space needed when the segment is first created.

I would be cautious about Oracle assurances...

Jim
---

go to the following for full list of available oracle book.
http://www.oracle.com/pls/db112/homepage

which links to the 11gr2 install guide
Db install guides
http://www.oracle.com/pls/db112/portal.portal_db?selected=11&frame=

which links to the following section on memory
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E11882_01/install.112/e17163/pre_install.htm#sthref62


------
2.2.1 Memory Requirements

The following are the memory requirements for installing Oracle Database 11g Release 2.

    *

      At least 4 GB of RAM

      To determine the RAM size, enter the following command:

# /usr/sbin/prtconf | grep "Memory size"

If the size of the RAM is less than the required size, then you must install more memory before continuing.

    *

      The following table describes the relationship between installed RAM and the configured swap space recommendation:

      Note:
      On Solaris, if you use non-swappable memory, like ISM, then you should deduct the memory allocated to this space from the available RAM before calculating swap space.
      RAM     Swap Space
      Between 4 GB and 16 GB     Equal to the size of RAM
      More than 16 GB     16 GB



On 10/29/2010 2:01 PM, Jim Mauro wrote:
Thanks Mike. Good point on the script.

Indeed, use of speculative tracing would be a better
fit here. I'll see if I can get something together and 
send it out.

Thanks,
/jim

On Oct 29, 2010, at 4:45 PM, Mike Gerdts wrote:

On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 2:50 PM, Robin Cotgrove <ro...@rjcnet.co.uk> wrote:
Sorry guys. Swap is not the issue. We've had this confirmed by Oracle and I can clearly see there is 96GB of swap awailable on the system and ~50GB of main memory.
By who at Oracle?  Not everyone is equally qualified.  I would tend to
trust Jim Mauro (who co-wrote the books[1] on Solaris internals,
performance, & dtrace) over most of the people you will get to through
normal support channels.

1. http://www.amazon.com/Jim-Mauro/e/B001ILM8NC/

How do you know that available swap doesn't momentarily drop?  I've
run into plenty of instances where a system has tens of gigabytes of
free memory but is woefully short on reservable swap (virtual memory,
as Jim approximates).  Usually "vmstat 1" is helpful in observing
spikes, but as I said before this could miss very short spikes.  If
you've already done this to see that swap is unlikely to be an issue,
knowing that would be useful to know.  If you are measuring the amount
of reservable swap with "swap -l", you are doing it wrong.

I do agree that there can be other shortfalls that can cause this.
This may call for speculative tracing of stacks across the fork entry
and return calls, displaying results only when the fork fails with
EAGAIN.  Jim's second script is similar to what I suggest, except that
it doesn't show the code path taken between syscall::forksys:entry and
syscall::forksys:return.

Also, I would be a little careful running the second script as is for
long periods of time if you have a lot of forksys activity with unique
stacks.  I think that as it is @ks may grow rather large over time
because the successful forks are not cleared.

-- 
Mike Gerdts
http://mgerdts.blogspot.com/
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