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High Performance Storage

Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2012 7:39 pm
by GaryL
We have a SAN with SQL Server Temp databases on RAID 10 drives. We are thinking of moving them to memory to get even better performance. Do you have any products like a RAMDISK that is supported on Windows Server 2008R2 and can create RAMDISKS of up to 32Gb in size?

Re: High Performance Storage

Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2012 8:21 pm
by anton (staff)
1) Bad idea. Use StarWind with caching and SSD back end.

2) Standard 64-bit edition of our RAM disk package supports unlimited capacity (OK, limited with size of your non-paged pool).
GaryL wrote:We have a SAN with SQL Server Temp databases on RAID 10 drives. We are thinking of moving them to memory to get even better performance. Do you have any products like a RAMDISK that is supported on Windows Server 2008R2 and can create RAMDISKS of up to 32Gb in size?

Re: High Performance Storage

Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2012 11:07 pm
by GaryL
Hi Anton,

Please elaborate:
1)Technically why would caching to SSD be faster than RAMDISK? Since TempDB is only temporary data it appears perfect for RAM with no need to store on Disk.
2)Is 64bit RAMDISK supported on Windows Server 2008R2?. Is there a version that can be purchased or just the free version I see on the website that sales told me is unsupported.

Thx.

Re: High Performance Storage

Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2012 8:38 am
by Bohdan (staff)
2) Yes. Don't forget to check "Large drive (AWE mode)" option. You may use the free version.
http://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-free
http://www.starwindsoftware.com/Microso ... iscsi-test

Re: High Performance Storage

Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2012 8:48 am
by Anatoly (staff)
Dear GaryL,
GaryL wrote:Technically why would caching to SSD be faster than RAMDISK? Since TempDB is only temporary data it appears perfect for RAM with no need to store on Disk.
If you are not affraid that your data will be 100% lost after power outage or similar situation than you can use RAM disk.
GaryL wrote: Is 64bit RAMDISK supported on Windows Server 2008R2?. Is there a version that can be purchased or just the free version I see on the website that sales told me is unsupported.
Our software works on WS2008R2, so feel free to use it. My colleague Bohdan provided you the link to download in the post above.

Re: High Performance Storage

Posted: Thu Apr 05, 2012 3:04 pm
by anton (staff)
1) I did not say this.

2) Who exactly told this so? Name?
GaryL wrote:Hi Anton,

Please elaborate:
1)Technically why would caching to SSD be faster than RAMDISK? Since TempDB is only temporary data it appears perfect for RAM with no need to store on Disk.
2)Is 64bit RAMDISK supported on Windows Server 2008R2?. Is there a version that can be purchased or just the free version I see on the website that sales told me is unsupported.

Thx.

Re: High Performance Storage

Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2012 2:02 am
by allfusion
anton (staff) wrote:1) Bad idea. Use StarWind with caching and SSD back end.

2) Standard 64-bit edition of our RAM disk package supports unlimited capacity (OK, limited with size of your non-paged pool).
GaryL wrote:We have a SAN with SQL Server Temp databases on RAID 10 drives. We are thinking of moving them to memory to get even better performance. Do you have any products like a RAMDISK that is supported on Windows Server 2008R2 and can create RAMDISKS of up to 32Gb in size?
where is the 64-bit edition?
when download and install
http://www.starwindsoftware.com/custome ... kSetup.exe
from
http://www.starwindsoftware.com/high-pe ... k-emulator
we can't create the "local ram disk" with size larger then 112MB on a computer with 80GB free memory

Re: High Performance Storage

Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2012 2:05 pm
by Anatoly (staff)
Dear allfusion,

I would recommend you to use StaRWind Free. You can download it by using teh link below:
http://www.starwindsoftware.com/download-free-trial

After you will install it and connect to host you will be able to create RAM disk.

Also, could you please clarify one thing:
When you are tryinh to create the RAM disk, is there more then 112 Megs of RAM free? Maybe something else is using the memory?

Re: High Performance Storage

Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2012 8:23 am
by allfusion
thanks for the reply,

the same computer ,we have create a iscsi ram disk through StaRWind Free ,the size is 16GB.
but the performance very poor.
we logon to this iscsi ram disk locally(discover the target using "localhost")
,and test the performance with hd-tune [ ... ]
,the average transfer rate only at 160MB/sec
as the comparison
the "local ram disk" created with "starwind ram disk" average transfer rate is 2000MB/sec

when we trying to create the "local ram disk" using "starwind ram disk",
there are 80GB FREE mem,nothing else useing the memony,
there are no any activity app on the computer with cpu usage 0%
by the way,when we try to create local ram disk ,the cpu usage rise to 7.6%(1/16),
and come down to 0% after create successed

Anatoly (staff) wrote:Dear allfusion,

I would recommend you to use StaRWind Free. You can download it by using teh link below:
http://www.starwindsoftware.com/download-free-trial

After you will install it and connect to host you will be able to create RAM disk.

Also, could you please clarify one thing:
When you are tryinh to create the RAM disk, is there more then 112 Megs of RAM free? Maybe something else is using the memory?

Re: High Performance Storage

Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2012 9:51 am
by Bohdan (staff)
Did you check the Large drive (AWE mode) option?
In what way was the RAM disk connected to the computer? Locally (127.0.0.1) ?

Re: High Performance Storage

Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2012 5:54 am
by allfusion
Did you check the Large drive (AWE mode) option?
yes
In what way was the RAM disk connected to the computer? Locally (127.0.0.1) ?
locally(127.0.0.1)
Bohdan (staff) wrote:Did you check the Large drive (AWE mode) option?
In what way was the RAM disk connected to the computer? Locally (127.0.0.1) ?

Re: High Performance Storage

Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2012 12:36 pm
by Anatoly (staff)
To be honest I haven`t any experience with the Benchmarking software that you have used.
Would you be so kind and perform testing with ATTO benchmark and share results with us (screenshot)?

Re: High Performance Storage

Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 7:25 am
by allfusion
atto benchmark result

Re: High Performance Storage

Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 11:44 am
by anton (staff)
For RAM disk it's DOG SLOW. Do you have write-back (or any type of...) cache for RAM-based storage disabled?

Re: High Performance Storage

Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2012 2:15 am
by allfusion
Do you sure there are any cache mode for RAM disk ?
we only find the cache mode for "Image File device"
anton (staff) wrote:For RAM disk it's DOG SLOW. Do you have write-back (or any type of...) cache for RAM-based storage disabled?