EnhanceIO: New Solid State Drive Caching For Linux

[phoronix]

Phoronix: EnhanceIO: New Solid State Drive Caching For Linux

A commercial company has opened up their Linux driver that is based upon their SSD (Solid-State Drive) caching software product. This code is designed to use SSDs as cache devices for traditional rotating hard drives. This new SSD caching driver is based upon Facebook's Flashcache...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTI3Mzc

[pankkake]

Good news; I had zero trust towards Facebook getting it included in the Linux kernel.

There's another external module doing what flashcache does, I wonder what it became...

[tomato]

Nice! I hope they will push to get it included in mainline.

[mgmartin]

This is good news. I've been using the capabilities of the zfs/zfsonlinux l2arc, but was just testing out flashcache again yesterday on non-zfs filesystems. Bcache is the only other current product that also provides a cache solution.

I may be wrong, but I couldn't see a way to install Bcache into an pre-existing linux kernel--the install method is to download a full blown, pre-patched kernel--too much work and to intrusive. Let me know if there is simpler way.

The latest flashcache was a small git clone and compile--took just a few minutes, and there were no problems with my existing 3.7 installed kernel source. I did have an issue with flashcache not working which I need to look into more. Flashcache caused sector read errors when used on an md raid device-- a raid0 device with two different sized raid1 devices. Flashcache worked fine on a simple md device.

[ryao]

This is good news. I've been using the capabilities of the zfs/zfsonlinux l2arc, but was just testing out flashcache again yesterday on non-zfs filesystems. Bcache is the only other current product that also provides a cache solution.

I may be wrong, but I couldn't see a way to install Bcache into an pre-existing linux kernel--the install method is to download a full blown, pre-patched kernel--too much work and to intrusive. Let me know if there is simpler way.

The latest flashcache was a small git clone and compile--took just a few minutes, and there were no problems with my existing 3.7 installed kernel source. I did have an issue with flashcache not working which I need to look into more. Flashcache caused sector read errors when used on an md raid device-- a raid0 device with two different sized raid1 devices. Flashcache worked fine on a simple md device.

You can use L2ARC and SLOG devices with non-ZFS filesystems. Just put them on a zvol.

[mgmartin]

Understood. The need was testing the ability of using a cache device without the zfs/spl dependencies.