Why a 2GB VPS Needs Swap Space for Spring Boot Applications

Huu Nghia Nguyen Feb 10, 2026 · 1 min read

Many developers believe that swap should be disabled because it is slower than RAM.

While that is technically true, running a small VPS without swap can be dangerous.

My Environment

The server worked well most of the time.

However, during memory spikes, Linux started killing the Java process.

When physical memory becomes exhausted, Linux must free memory quickly.

Without swap, the kernel may activate the Out Of Memory (OOM) Killer.

The OOM Killer selects a process and terminates it.

In many cases, Java applications become the target.

Swap gives Linux an additional memory buffer.

Inactive memory pages can be moved from RAM to disk.

This is slower than RAM but much better than terminating a production application.

For small VPS servers:

RAM              Swap

1GB              1GB - 2GB
2GB              2GB
4GB              2GB - 4GB
8GB+             2GB - 4GB

Swap is not a replacement for RAM.

However, for small production servers running Spring Boot, PostgreSQL, and Nginx, swap can dramatically improve stability.

A server with 2GB RAM and 2GB swap is usually much safer than a server with 2GB RAM and no swap.