Red Hat ENTREPRISE LINUX 5 Installation Manual page 61

4.19.4.2. x86, AMD64, and Intel® 64 systems
Unless you have a reason for doing otherwise, we recommend that you create the following partitions
for x86, AMD64, and Intel® 64 systems:
• A swap partition (at least 256 MB) — swap partitions are used to support virtual memory. In other
words, data is written to a swap partition when there is not enough RAM to store the data your
system is processing.
In years past, the recommended amount of swap space increased linearly with the amount of
RAM in the system. But because the amount of memory in modern systems has increased into the
hundreds of gigabytes, it is now recognized that the amount of swap space that a system needs is a
function of the memory workload running on that system. However, given that swap space is usually
designated at install time, and that it can be difficult to determine beforehand the memory workload
of a system, we recommend determining system swap using the following table.
Amount of RAM in the System
4GB of RAM or less
4GB to 16GB of RAM
16GB to 64GB of RAM
64GB to 256GB of RAM
256GB to 512GB of RAM
Table 4.3. Recommended System Swap Space
Note that you can obtain better performance by distributing swap space over multiple storage
devices, particularly on systems with fast drives, controllers, and interfaces.
• A /boot/ partition (250 MB) — the partition mounted on /boot/ contains the operating system
kernel (which allows your system to boot Red Hat Enterprise Linux), along with files used during the
bootstrap process. Due to limitations, creating a native ext3 partition to hold these files is required.
For most users, a 250 MB boot partition is sufficient.
Note
If your hard drive is more than 1024 cylinders (and your system was manufactured more
than two years ago), you may need to create a /boot/ partition if you want the / (root)
partition to use all of the remaining space on your hard drive.
Note
If you have a RAID card, be aware that some BIOSes do not support booting from the
RAID card. In cases such as these, the /boot/ partition must be created on a partition
outside of the RAID array, such as on a separate hard drive.
• A root partition (3.0 GB - 5.0 GB) — this is where "/" (the root directory) is located. In this setup, all
files (except those stored in /boot) are on the root partition.
A 3.0 GB partition allows you to install a minimal installation, while a 5.0 GB root partition lets you
perform a full installation, choosing all package groups.
Recommended Partitioning Scheme
Recommended Amount of Swap Space
a minimum of 2GB of swap space
a minimum of 4GB of swap space
a minimum of 8GB of swap space
a minimum of 16GB of swap space
a minimum of 32GB of swap space
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