[gpfsug-discuss] swapped_warn event

[Mathias Dietz]

Hi Jonathan,

Thank you for your question regarding the swapped_warn event.

In IBM Spectrum Scale, different categories of health events serve different purposes:

State-change events (such as degraded, failed, etc.) indicate actual problems or failures. These events typically resolve automatically; only a small number require manual resolution using the mmhealth event resolve command.
TIP events provide recommendations or highlight minor issues, best‑practice deviations, or configuration optimizations. These events do not indicate a failure. If desired, TIP events can be permanently hidden using mmhealth event hide, and once hidden they will not appear again.

The swapped_warn event falls into the TIP event category.

You are correct that a small amount of swap usage is not necessarily problematic, especially when plenty of RAM is available and the system is not actively swapping. However, we have seen multiple real-world cases where even moderate swap usage negatively impacted system responsiveness and overall Scale performance.

Because of this, the TIP is intended to help users who want to extract maximum performance from their systems. If swap usage is not a concern in your environment, you can safely hide the TIP and continue operating normally.

I hope this clarifies the purpose of the event and the available options. Please let me know if you need any additional information.


best regards

Mathias Dietz

Storage Scale RAS Architect

IBM Deutschland Research & Development GmbH
Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrats: Wolfgang Wendt
Geschäftsführung: David Faller
Sitz der Gesellschaft: Böblingen / Registergericht: Amtsgericht Stuttgart, HRB 243294
________________________________
From: gpfsug-discuss <gpfsug-discuss-bounces at gpfsug.org> on behalf of Jonathan Buzzard <jonathan.buzzard at strath.ac.uk>
Sent: Sunday, February 15, 2026 11:32 PM
To: gpfsug main discussion list <gpfsug-discuss at gpfsug.org>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] [gpfsug-discuss] swapped_warn event


I have a question about the swapped_warn event. It would appear the only
way to clear this message is to reboot the node or do a swapoff/swapon

If I try an mmhealth event resolve swapped_warn I get a message to say
swapped_warn is not manually resolvable.

Looking at one of the nodes showing this event, there is 1.2GB of swap
being used which is not usual on a Linux server. There is however 160GB
of free RAM, the server is not actually "swapping" at the moment and the
event is not resolving.

It does not appear to be a configurable threshold either.

So given that a Linux server is likely to "use" swap even if it has
*never* actually ran out of RAM and swapped since it was booted. What's
the purpose of this event and can I do something about it?


JAB.

--
Jonathan A. Buzzard                         Tel: +44141-5483420
HPC System Administrator, ARCHIE-WeSt.
University of Strathclyde, John Anderson Building, Glasgow. G4 0NG


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