What occurs when processes on a server attempt to allocate more memory than is available, leading to memory pages being swapped?

When processes on a server require more memory than is physically available, memory pages are moved to and from disk storage to free up RAM for active processes. This process is known as memory swapping. The operating system will take the less frequently used memory pages from RAM and temporarily move them to disk, allowing other processes to use the freed memory. When those pages are needed again, the operating system retrieves them from the disk back into RAM.

In contrast, memory paging refers to the management of memory where data is divided into fixed-size pages, and memory fragmentation concerns how memory can become inefficiently used over time due to allocation and deallocation of different sizes of memory blocks. Memory caching, on the other hand, involves storing frequently accessed data in memory for quicker access, but does not directly address the scenario of running out of available RAM. Thus, memory swapping accurately describes the situation where the operating system manages memory limitations by moving data between RAM and disk storage.