On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 10:50 PM, Steven Edwards <winehacker@gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 8:32 PM, Steven Edwards <winehacker@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 8:29 PM, Steven Edwards <winehacker@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 11:46 AM, Alex Ionescu <ionucu@videotron.ca> wrote:
>>> 1) You would get the SAME ADVANTAGE by having the FILE on another
>>> physical drive!
>>
>> Wouldn't you still have a problem with fragmentation leading to
>> additional io? I ask because the VMware/Netapp best practices for
>> Windows and Linux on ESX clusters still recommends a separate
>> filesystem dedicated to swap regardless of the the underlying backend
>> be it block (iSCSI, Fiberchannel) or file (NFS).
...
> Sorry if the point of the question is not clear. In a RAID/NAS/SAN
> backend situation, ALL DRIVES are in effect the same PHYSICAL DRIVE so
> that's why I ask why one would still be recommended to have a separate
> filesystem.

Ping? Nobody? So no idea why a separate dedicate virtual drive is
recommended for the pagefile.sys?
 
Frankly, the dimension of your case is beyond my experience.
All I can think of is the usual issue:

A separate filesys, or rather a separate *drive*, for swap reduce
butterfly-seeking for the read-write arm in the drive, because the
drive don't have to satisfy regular IO alongside page swapping.
This makes the swapping faster and more efficient.

I guess this applies even if you've got local striped raid volumes,
or you swap over a fiber, because in the end it all comes down
on a harddisk (or several).

Best Regards // Love