[squid-users] cache performance: flash drive substitute vs. fast hard drive

Anybody have performance experience (or benchmark results) putting Squid's cache on a Flash Drive?

Devices that plug into a disk cable but that contain only what you'd find in a thumb drive are available. They have zero latency and they have much faster transfer speed than a moving disk. On the other hand they don't have any internal cache memory; even small repetetive accesses always go directly to the flash memory. (A regular hard drive typically has 4-32MB cache memory, so although overall access is only as fast as the disk spins, a few repetetive accesses can be very fast.) How do these two opposing tendencies (better average transfer rate but no internal cache memory) net out with Squid's cache access pattern?

For a Squid cache, am I better off buying a small but really fast hard drive, or one of these flash drive substitutes?

-Chuck Kollars

      
Received on Tue Oct 07 2008 - 20:10:04 MDT