On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 01:02, Nicholas Lee <emptysa...@gmail.com> wrote: >> There's also the ACARD device: >> >> acard ANS-9010B $250 >> plus 8GB RAM $86 >> plus 16GB CF $44 >> >> It's also got a battery but can dump/restore the RAM to a CF card. >> It's physically larger and not cheaper nor faster than Intel X25E but >> at least it doesn't have the fragmentation problems to worry about. >> I've not tested it myself. Someone on the list tested it, but IIRC he >> did not use it as a slog, nor comment on how the CF dumping feature >> works (it sounds kind of sketchy. ``buttons'' are involved, which to >> me sounds very bad). > > I've seen these before, but dismissed them as they are 5.25" units which is > tricky in rack systems which generally only catered for 3.5". I wonder if > it is possible to pull these apart and put them in a smaller case. Speaking for the ACARD unit only, no. The circuit board occupies the whole area of the 5.25" bay, and the memory is standing straight up, which makes the thing necessarily taller than a 3.5" drive. Perhaps with the help of an EE you could work around these limitations... but at that point you might as well design your own device and avoid the limitations of the ACARD design. It only does 200 MB/s or so on one sata port, and to my mind that's inexcusable for a memory-based product.
> Has anyone done any specific testing with SSD devices and solaris other than > the FISHWORKS stuff? Which is better for what - SLC and MLC? My impression is that the flash controllers make a much bigger difference than the type of flash inside. You should take a look at AnandTech's review of the new OCZ Vertex drives [1], which has a fairly comprehensive set of benchmarks. I don't think any of the products they review are really optimal choices, though; the Intel X25-E drives look good until you see the price tag, and even they only do 30-odd MB/s random writes. Will [1]: http://anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531&p=21 _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
