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rated 0 times [  13] [ 0]  / answers: 1 / hits: 11210  / 1 Year ago, thu, december 15, 2022, 6:32:30

There appear to be various different technologies available to use an SSD to act as a cache for HHDs. The ones I know of:




  • dm-cache (by Redhat - in the 3.9 Kernel, so it should be in ubuntu 13.10)

  • Flashcache (developed and used by facebook)

  • Bcache (developed and used by Google )

  • EnhanceIO (by STEC; based on Flashcache)



Are there any noteworthy differences in the various implementations?
Which one is best for regular desktop PC use - to increase performance of usual programs such as web browsers or games?


More From » ssd

 Answers
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I really don’t know where to start, since all this is excellent information. I will start with some info about SSD’s, then a description of all the different caching methods, and just go from there. I hope that you



Advantages/Disadvantages




  • Price: SSDs are somehow expensive

  • Maximum and Common Capacity: High capacity SSD’s are very rare and
    expensive

  • Speed: This is where SSDs gets the edge

  • Durability: An SSD has no moving parts



Best to have a hybrid system, to have the best of both worlds (capacity, reliability, speed, etc.)




The Linux 3.9 kernel (made available on April 28, 2013) introduces SSD
caching. The kernel's Device mapper now includes a cache target called
dm-cache that enables SSDs or other storage device to be used as a
cache for a hard drive. It essentially speeds up data writes and reads
as it allows the faster SSD to first cache data and then transfer it
to the slower hard drive.




Source:Iwn




Flashcache is a module originally written and released by
Facebook(Mohan Srinivasan, Paul Saab and Vadim Tkachenko) in April of
2010. It is a kernel module that allows Writethrough caching of a drive on another drive. This is most often used for caching a
rotational drive on a smaller solid-state drive for performance
reasons. This gives you the speed of an SSD and the size of a standard
rotational drive for recently cached files. FlashCache is a general
purpose writeback block cache for Linux.




Source:ArchLinux




Bcache is a Linux kernel block layer cache. It allows one or more fast
disk drives such as flash-based solid state drives (SSDs) to act as a
cache for one or more slower hard disk drives.



Hard drives are cheap and big, SSDs are fast but small and expensive.
Wouldn't it be nice if you could transparently get the advantages of
both? With Bcache, you can have your cake and eat it too.



Bcache patches for the Linux kernel allow one to use SSDs to cache
other block devices. It's analogous to L2Arc for ZFS, but Bcache also
does writeback caching (besides just write through caching), and it's
filesystem agnostic. It's designed to be switched on with a minimum of
effort, and to work well without configuration on any setup. By
default it won't cache sequential IO, just the random reads and writes
that SSDs excel at. It's meant to be suitable for desktops, servers,
high end storage arrays, and perhaps even embedded.



The design goal is to be just as fast as the SSD and cached device
(depending on cache hit vs. miss, and writethrough vs. writeback
writes) to within the margin of error. It's not quite there yet,
mostly for sequential reads. But testing has shown that it is
emphatically possible, and even in some cases to do better - primarily
random writes.




Source:Bcache



Bcache has a big disadvantage, and that it takes away memory from the system to implement the cache.




EnhanceIO is a solution that runs beneath the application layer,
enabling applications to utilize the performance benefits of SSDs
without major IT infrastructure changes. An SSD cache can yield most
of the benefits of switching from HDDs to SSDs at a fraction of the
cost of an all-SSD system. A cached system typically operates on less
power than an HDD-based system of similar performance, and that
creates a side benefit by reducing cooling requirements.



An SSD cache can also extend the useful life of an existing system by
improving performance to meet growing demands through an incremental
investment, rather than through a wholesale upgrade/replacement of the
existing system.



Caching also enables faster access to the data without the extra
storage administration overhead to acquire and install new disk
shelves, configuring new LUNs and migrating data to the new LUNs.
Caching is almost transparent and requires little if any downtime.
EnhanceIO is based upon Flashcache.




Source:Stec-Inc




bcache is the most worthless of all because it requires specially
prepared (formatted) data partition. This makes it difficult (if
possible) to attach cache to existing partition with data as one would
need 200% capacity and to perform long data-moving in order to
activate/deactivate caching.



The brilliance of EnhanceIO is that it doesn't need intermediate
device at all and can be attached to any block device on-the-fly even
when device is already mounted. Another super-cool thing is that you
can attach EnhanceIO cache not just to partition but to partitioned
block device to cache all its partitions at once. Just like flashcache
enchanceio modules are built with DKMS and can be used with older
kernels.




Source: Debian




DM Cache Advantages



DM caches use a simplified architecture, which makes them adaptable
and easy to customize. Users can adjust the block size and the cache
capacity based on the amount of data it will have to handle or on the
value of the data. If a particular application needs to store a great
deal of data in sequence, users can configure the cache for that
purpose. If a user wants to record information in a database
simultaneously with the cache, that won't interfere with the cache's
operations.



DM Cache Dis-Advantages



One drawback to using a DM cache is that the Linux operating system
has limited space for storing metadata. If the cache is large, and
includes lots of small blocks, that adds up to a lot of metadata for
the stored information. To solve this problem, the user must increase
the block size. Another possible problem is that, after a server
crash, the cache metadata may no longer match the cache contents,
though it is possible to restore the correct configuration eventually.




Source: Complements of Fraser Sherman



So from the above information it’s clear that EnhanceIO is the way to go, but in my opinion since it’s based on Flashcache, I would go with flash cache. But I will definitely try both of them before making a final decision.


[#31396] Friday, December 16, 2022, 1 Year  [reply] [flag answer]
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