Linux Memory Hotplug Support

Overview

This project is to make memory hotplug feature on Linux.

If memory is broken, it should be exchanged for new one. In current Linux, the server must be shutdown before exchange. However, rebooting time of huge machine is sometimes over 30 minutes. It will be unacceptable for enterprise system. So, memory hotplug is to avoid this time.

Memory hotplug is also effective for Capacity On Demand(COD). In general, it is difficult to predict necessary amount of resource beforehand. If memory hot add is enabled, the server can avoid slowdown by adding memory when over workload occur. In addition, this feature is sometimes used among partition of machine or virtual machine. One partition can give redundant memory to other partition.