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High Capacity RAMDrive-like Devices?
UranusHertz asks: "We are trying to build a multiheaded, read-only database and we are looking to see if there is a device that will act as a large RAMdrive. We are currently using RAID arrays and fibre channel SCSI arrays. What we would like is essentially a large (8GB and up), volitile array of RAM to do the same thing that the RAID does now. One head (server) would have control over the device and the other heads would mount it NFS read-only. We are stil not sure if the database will even do this yet, but we are also trying to stay ahead of the game."
Quantum makes a series of solid state disks for this purpose. Basically it is just static RAM packaged up with a SCSI-3 interface, but if you really are looking for numbers, you can't beat these specs: sub-50 microsecond access time. 30MB/sec transfer rate, sustained.. not bad.
The downside, of course, is the cost: $68,000 for a 1.6 gigger IIRC. You're looking at over a quarter of a million for 8gb, but if your app really is that mission critical, Rushmore seems to be your best bet.
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I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
The idea is you use slow and cheap DRAM instead of fast and expensive SDRAM. But even the slowest DRAM is still far faster then a disk drive.
Secondly you treat all of this ram as a disk drive using specialized hardware that doesn't have any problem using multi-gigs of memory.
I learned about a specific machine for that on a datawarehousing course i once was sent to *gasp*. At the moment I can't remember the name of that beast, but it was intended for running complete datawarehouses from RAM! (too a while to start up though, a bit like WinNT ;)) I will try to find the name of the machine when I get home, I have some old documentation lying about.
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