Going OT For David - RE: [Mimedefang] mail server performence declain

[John Scully]

Gigabyte recently (Aug 25th ) announced a $50 battery protected PCI/SATA
ramdisk card.  text below copied from the announcement.  I am going to try
one of these.

"The card is a regular 32-bit PCI card that features four standard DIMM
slots on board.  The card also features a custom Gigabyte FPGA that is
programmed to act as a SATA to DDR translator, which convinces the SATA
controller you connect the card to that the memory you have on that card is
no different than a regular SATA HDD.  As long as you have memory on the
card, the card will be available at POST as an actual SATA drive, with no
additional drivers necessary.

The card is powered via the PCI slot, but RAM is volatile and thus if no
power is provided to the card then all of the data is lost.  In order to
make this solution more realistic for real-world usage, Gigabyte outfitted
the card with a rechargeable battery pack that can keep the memory powered
and data intact for up to 16 hours with no power.  After that 16 hours is
up, your data is lost, but as soon as you apply power to the card again the
battery pack will begin to recharge.  "

This is an interesting way to implement a ramdisk.  The PCI slot is just
controlling the card and providing power (including recharging the battery),
but the card plugs into a SATA controller and appears as a standard HDD.

John Scully


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mack" <roaringpenguin.com at bass-speaker.com>
To: <mimedefang at lists.roaringpenguin.com>
Sent: Monday, September 19, 2005 1:02 PM
Subject: Going OT For David - RE: [Mimedefang] mail server performence
declain


>
> Probably, mind you, I don't use a ram based spool, but my reasoning is the
> limiting factor on email sizes (yes i still have to be able to process
msgs
> up to 1GB (don't ask) and i run 25 threads, so that would be an expensive
> ram disk !!
>
> However, I still see sub 1/2 second process times on emails even with 3 av
> engines and spamassissin (with a huge ruleset) running, even when almost
all
> threads are loaded :)
>
> But then I rely on the load average creeping up, and sendmail rejecting
> connections (due to having set the reject LA quite low) which the Load
> balancer then distributes to other boxes. So even a biggie email doesn't
> clog the system
>
> Also a nice 15k Raid 5 (for the local processing) does help
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: mimedefang-bounces at lists.roaringpenguin.com
> [mailto:mimedefang-bounces at lists.roaringpenguin.com]On Behalf Of David
> F. Skoll
> Sent: 19 September 2005 17:50
> To: mimedefang at lists.roaringpenguin.com
> Subject: Re: [Mimedefang] mail server performence declain
>
>
> Mack wrote:
> > I'll repost this, as it may help
>
> Based on the OP's article, I bet he's not using a RAM disk, which
> will of course kill performance.
>
> See http://www.mimedefang.org/kwiki/index.cgi?RamBasedSpoolDirectory
>
> --
> David.
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