Information
Announcement Support for this product will end on November 3, 2025. We recommend that you use PATROL for Linux, PATROL for AIX, or PATROL for Solaris to monitor operating systems.

% Swap Space Used System-wide (SWPTotSwapUsedPercent)


Description

This parameter displays the percentage of the total system-wide swap space in use. Once your system is out of swap space, it cannot start any new processes, and running processes cannot spawn new processes.

Default Action Taken by PATROL

PATROL annotates the parameter's value with a report that displays the top 10 highest CPU-using processes (the value of the Processes-Using-Most-CPU-Time-PROCTopProcs). Annotations are denoted by an asterisk (or user-specified symbol) in the graph.

Recommendations

If your system runs out of swap space regularly, you should add more swap space. Your only other alternative is to schedule or terminate jobs with large memory requirements. You should become very familiar with your system's work load and standard processes. Killing frivolous processes and scheduling jobs with large memory requirements to run during non-peak times may improve performance greatly.

The defaults (Warning at two consecutive hits in the 90% to 95% range and Alarm at two consecutive hits in the 95% to 100% range) are reasonable for a typical system. However, knowing the characteristics of your system and its work load will help you determine whether to change the defaults.

Default parameter attributes

Attribute

Default value

Application class

SWAP

Command type

not applicable

Platform

all

Icon style

gauge

Unit

percentage

Border range

0-100

Alarm1 range

95-95: warn

Alarm2 range

95-100: alarm

Scheduling (poll time)

inherits poll time of collector

Active at installation

no

Parameter type

consumer

Value set by

DCMColl controlled by SWAPCtrl
SWAP discovery when in PSL collection mode

BMC ProactiveNet Performance Management properties

Property

Default value

Monitor type

Swap

Key Performance Indicator

No

Monitor for abnormalities

No

Graph by default

No

Availability

No

Response time

No

Normal distribution

Yes

Statistical

Yes

 

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BMC PATROL for UNIX and Linux 9.13