RAMdisk RAID?

drew_92123 asks: "I've got a friend who does a LOT of video editing but is on a limited budget. He is currently using a raid array and while quite large, it's not as fast as he had hoped. I had an idea and wanted to know if there is a way to make it a reality, so of course I though of all the brilliant minds here. I have about a dozen Pentium II computers with 1GB of RAM. I would like to upgrade them to 2GB and throw in some gigabit NICs and create a 1.9GB RAMdisk on each one. Then I want to use one of the computers to RAID the RAMdisks together to be shared via Samba most likely. They are all 1U systems, with no HDD's, just a 64MB IDE flash disk. Any ideas out there?" Has anyone successfully put together such a system? How well did it work for you and are there any caveats that you would like to share with others who would do the same?

Comments

Also...

[foooo]

Ever thought of just upgrading your SCSI controller? You can get RAID controllers that have insane amounts of RAM in them. That might patch up any access issues.

If your concern is extended duration throughput the multiple rack computers with ram *might* be an option, but most normal users wouldn't consider it due to the latency involved with going through the southbridge then the nic then the nic then the southbridge (of the other computer) then the north bridge. And that's just a one way trip.

Just don't shell out a bunch of money before you do a proof of concept.

~george