64 Bit / Swap Issue?

Hi Guys,

We have been running our systems on high end Redhat ES 32 Bit servers
without any sort of glitch. We have now set up a 64 bit Athlon server
running Redhat ES, installed the Redhat PgSQL as well as the PHP5 RPM.

I have been experiencing incredible slow performance from my server, and am
at a loss for solution. Should I be moving back to a 32 bit system?

This is the reply I have from Rackspace:

"Secondly "sar" is showing that you are dipping quite a bit into your swap
space. When dealing with a database server, any time that you move from RAM
to swap you will see a massive performance drop, especially when dealing
with as much swap as this machine has. At its peak you were hitting
70%(700M) of swap. Since PostgreSQL is unsupported I don't have any
suggestions on query optimizations. However, at this point upgrading your
available RAM would be one of my best suggestions."

Does anyone have any experience on this? Most of the things I have read
suggest that I move back to 32 bit but I do think it's a step backward -
that's if this can be supported.

Regards and thanks,

James Dey

james(at)mygus(dot)com

0861-11-44-03

Intl. : +27 (0) 11 704-1945

Fax : +27 (0) 11 3888-907

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