On 08/10/99 18:25:05 you wrote:
On Tue, 10 Aug 1999 sirbruce@ix.netcom.com wrote:
Given that Netapp's NVRAM allocates writes and then dumps them to disk periodically in stripes, this type of optimization would probably work well with them. Perhaps they do it already. :)
I'm sure they do it. Does NetApp's NVRAM allocate writes? I though NetApp held raw NFS packets in the NVRAM.
Yes. I was sorta speaking in shorthand. My understanding is that the raw NFS packets get storied both in NVRAM and main memory; the point is once the NVRAM is half-full, or at 10 seconds, outstanding write data is collected and sent to disk, and the NVRAM flushed. There's some amount of allocation involved here and I think some parity stuff that actually gets stored in NVRAM as well; I didn't mean to imply, however, that actual SCSI commands or disk blocks are being stored there. My knowledge of exactly what happens in detail ends here, so I'll let someone else explain more thoroughly if you're really curious.
Bruce