In my attempt to configure a well-optimized VM (Linux as a secondary OS), I was wondering if it is a good idea to use a virtualized Linux swap file, or if I should just run Linux without swap and rely on the OS X host to provide the swap. e.g. allocating 1 GB RAM to the Linux VM instead of allocating 512 MB to the VM and set a 512 MB swap partition on the VM hard disk file. Instinctively, I'd say the former should be the best approach. since it removes an emulation layer. I've read some forum postings and FAQ's, but wasn't able to make an informed decision. Has someone performed performance tests in boths scenarios? What if the official word (if any) from Parallels? Or does it just not matter?
I haven't done any testing, but I can tell you that any RAM you allocate to the guest appears to be allocated from physical RAM and not swapped. My experiments show the sweet spot to with Win2k on a 2gb MBP ot be 768k for the guest, and 850 to 1024 for Parallels (doesn't seem to matter in that range). YMMV.
