bfriesen, Ultimately stuff flows in and stuff flows out. Data is not reused, so a cache does not do anything for us. As a buffer, it is simply a rubber band, a FIFO. So if the client wrote something real quick it would complete quickly. But if it is writing an unlimited amount of data (like 200GB) without reading anything, it all simply flows through the buffer. Whether the buffer is 128MB or 4GB, once the buffer is full the client will have to wait until something flows out to the disk. So the system runs at the speed of the slowest component. If accesses are done only once, caches don't help. A buffer helps only to smooth out localized chunkyness.
Regarding the NVRAM discussion, what does this have to do with my situation with rotating magnetic disks with tiny 8MB embedded volatile caches? The behavior of disks or storage subsystems with NVRAM are not pertinent to my situation! Or do I have something backwards? -- This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
