Any thoughts?
We're running Red Hat Advanced Server 2.1 with the kswapd 100% system issue described in another thread below.
Now, we're being told we have to upgrade the kernel for Sarb-Ox compliance, and our IT group is proposing RH EL 3.0.
I would rather have the 2.6 kernel as RH EL 3.0 is still the 2.4 kernel. Our IT group says that 2.6 kernel is Red Hat 4.0 that just went GA, so they won't approve it until it has an SP1.
I can respect that, but I hear the 2.6 kernel has much better enterprise capabilities, but do I really need to wait for SP1?
This is for a pretty hefty EDI system we need to be rock-solid reliable. The RH AS 2.1 was supposed to be "that" kernel, but it has proven sadly unreliable and I'm not happy at all with memory management. It seems that a lot of memory goes to the cache in backups and high load. On a 4 gig machine, we see as much as 2.2 gig go into the cache after backup.
We played with the page cache settings, with default at 2 50 90. We tried 2 50 25, 2 50 50, but neither seemed to help the lockups. The IT group is proposing 8 gig of memory and go back to 2 50 25.
We'll probably go ahead with RH EL 3.0 and hope this kswapd gets fixed without having to go all the way to the 2.6 kernel.
Glen