I had a question to the group:
In the different ZFS discussions in zfs-discuss, I've seen a
recurring theme of disabling write cache on disks. I would think that
the performance increase of using write cache would be an advantage,
and that write cache should be enabled.
Realistically, I can see only one situation where write cache would
be an issue. If there is no way to flush the write cache, it would
be possible for corruption to occur due to a power loss.
The question really devolves into:
- Does the reliability increase due to the disabling write cache
offset the failure potential incurred by using write cache?
In recent Linux distributions, when the kernel shuts down, the
kernel will force the scsi drives to flush their write cache. I
don't know if solaris does the same but I think not, due to the
ongoing focus of solaris and disabling write cache. Would having a
feature like forcing disk flush be sufficient to enable write cache?
-----
Gregory Shaw, IT Architect
Phone: (303) 673-8273 Fax: (303) 673-2773
ITCTO Group, Sun Microsystems Inc.
1 StorageTek Drive ULVL4-382 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work)
Louisville, CO 80028-4382 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (home)
"When Microsoft writes an application for Linux, I've Won." - Linus
Torvalds
_______________________________________________
zfs-discuss mailing list
zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org
http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
