Objectives

Swap has existed since the first days of UNIX, although its implementation has changed greatly over the years and across the different UNIX flavors. In this chapter, we will be looking at the Solaris implementation of swap. This will include a description of what swap is and how it fits into the memory management scheme of a Solaris server. We will also look at the kernel parameters that define how swap is used, how we can monitor our swap space, and what signs can tell us that we may have problems with it.