Swap configuration for 16GB of RAM, 8 cores

I am installing two servers, each with 16GB of RAM, two quad-core Xeon
processors, and a SATA hard drive. The machines will be compute
servers, meaning lots of concurrently logged in users, each running
an assortment of jobs, and various long-running processes. The jobs
will be
vastly dissimilar with regards to using the memory, disk, and CPU, and
to
their run time, so the configuration should be generic, general
purpose.

What are the current best practices with regards to swap partitions?
Is it
better to create one big, or several smaller swap partitions? Is the
rule
of thumb still RAM*2 for the total size?

We are running Debian 4.0/Etch with the stock -i686-bigmem kernel.

Any input or pointers will be highly appreciated!
--
Arcady Genkin


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