RamDisk

[David Lancaster]

On Tue, 17 Dec 2002, Peter Peters wrote:

> >I had an idea earlier about possibly using some sort of ramdisk to handle
> >the mailscanning and mailq items.
> Allthough most systems are reliable enough and with no-break systems one
> would keep a system up for years. But when something happens you would
> lose everything in the queue.

I believe Randy is talking about a dedicated hardware Ramdisk, complete
with auxiliary power supply (which would of course be UPS'ed, right? ;)

> I have been wondering also because I know somebody who delivers very
> small computersystems running on flashcards. These (the versions with 3
> LAN's) are installed as firewall. But there are also versions with 1 LAN
> and those would be perfect for an application level firewall (which I
> believe MS is) if one could keep the queue to a minimal (=0) size.

I don't think you'd want to keep a mail queue of any size on a flash disk.
Flash has a very limited number or erase/write cycles per block. It would
probably wear out fast if it was processing mail. Also, some flash
technologies are actually slower than IDE drives for erasing&writing
operations.
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/solid-state/index.html#INTRO

A non-volatile Ramdisk (seperate power supply/battery backup) seems like a
possibility.

Back in the Apple IIe days, I had a 512k X 2 Ramdisk with a hefty lead
acid battery in a attached box. It was fast, but only had enough battery
for 8 hours or so when the power went out.  And as the battery aged...eep!

D.


===========================================================
David Lancaster
ITS ESS
447-3212