Ram disk max size = 500mb ??????????

Initiator (iSCSI, FCoE, AoE, iSER and NVMe over Fabrics), iSCSI accelerator and RAM disk

Moderators: anton (staff), art (staff), Max (staff), Anatoly (staff)

Post Reply
Tryst
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 1:56 pm

Sat Aug 21, 2004 2:06 pm

I have 2 gig of Ram and the docs tell me that I can set up to 1 gig (1024mb) as a ram disk. However, anything above 500mb gives me a "not enough memory" error. 800mb would be nice so I can store a temporary image of a CD I am copying onto it to reduce buffer errors.

Apart From SpybotSD, Norton AV and Daemon tools/DaemonUI, I have nothing in the systray except the usual junk XP puts there.

I doubt even XP can use 1.5 gig before running any other apps, so it appears that something is going wrong with Starport.

Anyone got any ideas about why I can't allocate more than 500mb?
My idea of an OS is one that Operates the System, not a complete package of every piece of software ever written.
User avatar
anton (staff)
Site Admin
Posts: 4008
Joined: Fri Jun 18, 2004 12:03 am
Location: British Virgin Islands
Contact:

Sat Aug 21, 2004 8:19 pm

There's nothing wrong with StarPort. Do you have any RAM disk emulator allocating more then StarPort does? What size StarPort reports is can create RAM disk for?
Regards,
Anton Kolomyeytsev

Chief Technology Officer & Chief Architect, StarWind Software

Image
User avatar
anton (staff)
Site Admin
Posts: 4008
Joined: Fri Jun 18, 2004 12:03 am
Location: British Virgin Islands
Contact:

Sun Aug 22, 2004 12:39 pm

As as workaround you may install StarWind on the same machine, confugure it to ran RAM disk emulation (StarWind is user mode app with Address Extensions API used so can grab large amounts of RAM, up to approx. 1.5GB) and connect to StarWind from StarPort to loopback (address 127.0.0.1). This is gonna work in 99% of cases (even when StarPort was not able to grab enough RAM from kernel).
Regards,
Anton Kolomyeytsev

Chief Technology Officer & Chief Architect, StarWind Software

Image
Anata_mo
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Oct 13, 2006 9:03 am

Fri Oct 13, 2006 9:24 am

Hi there, I just wanted to confirm that I too have that exact problem. I can use up to 710MB which uses at total of 934,5MB of RAM in my PC (I too have 2GB of RAM)

Another minor problem is that when you try to use the step control, it increases upto 1.024 which throws an error (se pic 1) then you must manually type 1024 (1.024 without the dot) before you can continue.
Val (staff)
Posts: 496
Joined: Tue Jun 29, 2004 8:38 pm

Fri Oct 13, 2006 9:47 am

Hi,

Thank you for the feedback.
We'll fix the bug in the next minor version.

According to the maximun RAM disk size. It depends on current system memory load but the recent StarPort implementation is able to create at most 1GB ram drive. This is a limitation by design.
Usually the maximum ramdisk size is 700-800MB for machines with more than 1GB of RAM.
Best regards,
Valeriy
Anata_mo
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Oct 13, 2006 9:03 am

Fri Oct 13, 2006 9:58 am

According to the maximun RAM disk size. It depends on current system memory load but the recent StarPort implementation is able to create at most 1GB ram drive. This is a limitation by design.
But as you can see on Picture 2, the memory load at RAM disk creation time is only 225,6MB which leaves about 1,77GB of RAM available?

Ps. Have tried version 2.something and current version 3.0.4 with same result
Val (staff)
Posts: 496
Joined: Tue Jun 29, 2004 8:38 pm

Fri Oct 13, 2006 10:38 am

Anata_mo wrote:
According to the maximun RAM disk size. It depends on current system memory load but the recent StarPort implementation is able to create at most 1GB ram drive. This is a limitation by design.
But as you can see on Picture 2, the memory load at RAM disk creation time is only 225,6MB which leaves about 1,77GB of RAM available?

Ps. Have tried version 2.something and current version 3.0.4 with same result
Current implementation uses the kernel paged pool to allocate ram disk.
The paged pool is a limited resource.

The Ramdisk module is usually used for benchmark testing and so on, very few people reported that they use the module for some other actions. That's why we have no plans to enhance the module's capabilities for the moment.

If you are really interested in using the Ramdisk module, please contact us at support@starwind.com and we'll see what we can do for you.
Best regards,
Valeriy
darkstar782
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Oct 27, 2006 10:52 pm

Fri Oct 27, 2006 10:57 pm

My use of the Ramdisk will amuse you :)

I have 3GiB of RAM, Windows idles at about 2.5GiB free most of the time. As such I have disabled the system paging file, as Window's badly written memory management routines will often swap to disk when it is completely unneeded.

Some games however (Company of Heroes is one example) *demand* a paging file of a certain size (768mb in the above case). I therefore create an ~800mb Ramdisk and place a pagefile on it.

My system allows other applications to create RAMdisks of 800MiB and more, so I dont think it is a system limitation. Any help setting a Ramdisk over 512mb would be greatly appreciated :)
User avatar
anton (staff)
Site Admin
Posts: 4008
Joined: Fri Jun 18, 2004 12:03 am
Location: British Virgin Islands
Contact:

Fri Oct 27, 2006 11:08 pm

Use StarPort to connect to StarWind with large RAM disk exported as iSCSI target. That's the only way so far... We don't have any plans to do anything with current StarPort RAM disk implementation.
Regards,
Anton Kolomyeytsev

Chief Technology Officer & Chief Architect, StarWind Software

Image
darkstar782
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Oct 27, 2006 10:52 pm

Sat Oct 28, 2006 12:12 pm

Unfortunately that also reduces the performance of the Ramdisk from around 2500 MB/s sustained to around 100 MB/s sustained, presumably because of the use of the Windows TCP/IP stack.

Still, I do appreciate this is probably a very 'niche' application of a Ramdisk, I'm sure I can find another way around the issue :)
User avatar
anton (staff)
Site Admin
Posts: 4008
Joined: Fri Jun 18, 2004 12:03 am
Location: British Virgin Islands
Contact:

Sat Oct 28, 2006 2:43 pm

Regards,
Anton Kolomyeytsev

Chief Technology Officer & Chief Architect, StarWind Software

Image
Post Reply