hardware RAM disk

[Daniel Feenberg]

On Tue, 12 May 2009, Tom Metro wrote:

> Running out of things to do with cheap DRAM? Have a machine that's fully
> loaded up on RAM, and you want a RAM disk, but don't want to use any
> system RAM?
>
> I ran across this odd device today:
>
> ACARD ANS9010 5.25 inch SATA x 2-to-DDRII RAM Disk
> http://www.mwave.com/mwave/SkuSearch_v2.asp?SCriteria=AA74660
>
> Fits in a 5.25" drive bay, takes up to 8 DDR2 DIMMs (64GB), and provides
> a SATA interface to the host (actually 2, I guess for greater
> bandwidth). It also includes a CF slot and a battery with enough juice
> to keep it running long enough to copy the RAM to a CF card. Priced at
> $360 without RAM.
>
> Should be faster than a Flash-based solid state drive. The manufacturer
> claims "IOPS 130,000 per SATA port."
>
> So what would *you* use it for? A ZFS write cache, perhaps?

The sendmail queue diretories, if I could be sure it was reliable. They 
are not too large, get intense use and can't be simulated by an ordinary 
memory disk because they have to survive power down or reboot. There is 
some discussion of solid state drives for the queues in Christenson's book 
"Sendmail Performance Tuning" but he doesn't really report any experience.

Daniel Feenberg

>
>  -Tom
>
> -- 
> Tom Metro
> Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
> "Enterprise solutions through open source."
> Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/
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