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mmcg
Asked: 2009-12-15 07:53:01 +0800 CST

Is is possible to move to a CentOS PAE kernel after installing more RAM

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I'm creating new virtual Linux servers on ESXi hosts. The existing systems are 32-bit RHEL with 4GB RAM. I am planning to create the new servers with 4GB RAM and run 32-bit CentOS 5.

If I want to add more RAM later I'd need to move to a PAE kernel. Is this possible / desirable ?

Thanks, Mark

Is the only changed needed to install a PAE kernel and boot from it? Does everything else stay the same?

centos

2 Answers

  1. It's possible but I'd suggest you went with 64-bit now unless there's a good reason not to.

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  2. Best Answer

    Yes, as you say, just install the PAE-aware kernel and boot from it.

    As a matter of fact, if you have 4GB of memory allocated to the VMs now, you might see an improvement with the new kernel. I'll bet that if you look right now on a non-PAE kernel'd host, you'll find you have about 3.3GB of available memory, not 4.0GB.

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