Giant RAM drives

[Z_Amon]

Has anybody ever run a RAM drive larger than 1 GB? If so, what were your experiences?
Or, have you run a solid state hard drive?

My situation: I have a distributed network app that writes back results in packet form, resulting in fragmented drives. (picture 40 processes writing small amounts of 40 files, a bit at a time, rinse, repeat for a couple gig).

The apparent best solution is a RAM drive which I can periodically flush to the hard drive, solving not only write speed issues, but also fragmentation issues. Thus, I save wear and tear on my rather expensive SCSI array, and give the program itself a lot more speed to work with for the writes since memory is significantly faster. I have considered a caching SCSI RAID controller, but they are of limited use for constant, random writes at the speed and volume required.

The apps that I have found, such as RAMdiskNT appear to be viable solutions, but I'd love to have any feedback from people have have used them. I'll be testing it out myself as I can, so I'll try to post results here once our graphics people give me feedback and I get a machine set up with enough RAM to make it really worthwhile.

(and, unfortunately, small RAM drives need not apply: the scale and the usage are signifcantly different from keeping a /temp directory or a disk cache).

Thanks!

Z.

 

[dullard]

I was a little unsure of your question. Do you want your computers main memory used as a RAM drive? Or do you want to buy a add on RAM drive (one which saves to its own RAM, has a back-up power supply, and a regular HD that it saves to once the power is shut off)? These are two completely different solutions to your problem. The second solution is expensive and reliable, the first is cheap and may be quite unreliable.

Assuming you want the first solution: Be sure to buy an uninterupted power supply (about $100). Your RAM will be erased if power ever goes out, losing all of your data. With a UPS you still have about 15 minutes to save your RAM data to your regular drive before you lose it. I find this a very fast solution to many problems. I never used over 1 Gig, but 300 MB works for me.

 

[Z_Amon]

In all truth, the former (system RAM as a RAM drive) is more attractive, largely due to flexibility and pricing.

The solid state drive issue is more of a comparison concept.

I'll equip the server with a UPS, as well as periodic checkpointing for the RAM drive - in this case, the UPS for a machine of the calibre that I'm going to be using will be in the 1500 VA range, with automated shutdown, as the render array runs unattended over weekends and evenings for large jobs.

 

[TheOverlord]

interesting situation...bump for ya