Swap space is used by the Linux OS to help manage memory (pages) by copying pages from RAM to disk and the OS is configured by default to be fairly aggressive. For Redis Enterprise Software (RS) with the way it utilizes and manages memory, it is best to eliminate the likelihood of the OS swapping. If you would like to understand why, please read more on memory limits for best functionality and performance. The formal recommendation is to disable Linux swap completely in the OS.

Disabling swap

To disable the swap in the OS of an existing server/VM/instance, you must have sudo access or be root to run the following command:

$ sudo swapoff -a
$ sudo sed -i.bak '/ swap / s/^(.*)$/#1/g' /etc/fstab

The first command turns swap off immediately and the second command comments out the swap partitions configured in the OS so swap being off survives a reboot.

If you are able to, it is best when you install/build the OS on the server/VM/instance to be used in your RS cluster, to simply not configure swap partitions at all.