Talk:Memory overcommitment

This article has not yet been rated on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details.

Computing Stub‑class

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Computing, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of computers, computing, and information technology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ComputingWikipedia:WikiProject ComputingTemplate:WikiProject ComputingComputing
Stub	This article has been rated as Stub-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details.

Software: Computing Stub‑class

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Software, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of software on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SoftwareWikipedia:WikiProject SoftwareTemplate:WikiProject Softwaresoftware
Stub	This article has been rated as Stub-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by WikiProject Computing.

Generalize

@Ironholds: Memory overcommit is a much more general concept in operating system memory management and isn't necessarily tied to virtualization. -- intgr [talk] 11:38, 20 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Intgr: if you can give me some example sources I'm happy to weave those in; I operated from the sources available to me. Ironholds (talk) 14:29, 20 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Ironholds: Googling around, it does indeed appear that the virtualization community has largely hijacked this term because it never was a "hot topic" before. But here are some sources I could find quickly: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

But the fact that Linux (and other operating systems in some cases) may hand out more memory than they actually have, is a well known fact.

From a cursory reading, there appears to be a significant difference in how the terms are used. In OS terminology, "overcommitting" is when the OS allows applications to allocate more memory than RAM+swap space. But in virtualization, exceeding physical RAM is already considered overcommitting. -- intgr [talk] 15:18, 20 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]