RAM question for everyone!

[Alan Evans]

On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 7:43 AM, Dan Track <dan.track at gmail.com> wrote:
> I was recently asked a question about how much RAM should there be
> within a server given that the APP uses 8GB of Memory, should I buy
> 10Gig of memory and have a small harddrive and no swap space? Would
> this configuration allow everything in my OS to run from RAM and not
> from swap? If this is the case then there's no need to ever create
> swap, is there?!?
>
> Your thoughts are appreciated.

This question, along with other recent discussion about swap, leads me
to ask a question in response: Why is everyone so concerned about how
to get away without swap?

Hard drives are cheap. Why does your server with potentially 10GB
(!!!) of RAM have a hard drive so small that you can't sacrifice a few
GB for swap?

I'm really curious.