High cache memory usage with virtual machines causes swapping

Solution Verified - Updated -

Issue

Nearly all free memory appears to be lost to cache, when free memory is needed by qemu-kvm client the host starts to swap, though a lot of memory would have been available (if not lost to that cache).

Swapping is not wanted and will cause after a while an alarm by design.

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6

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