l l wrote:
What does the "system board memory" value refer to in sysconfig?
"system board memory" refers to the amount of physical memory that is present and operational in your Network Appliance system (be it a filer or a NetCache).
What does the NVRAM cache refer to?
NV means Non Volatile. The NVRAM is the device which holds file system transactions that have occured since the last consistency point was committed to the disks. NVRAM holds both the data and operational information of those transactions. In the event of power failure or other interruption to service, the Network Appliance software will be able to reconstruct the file system quickly and correctly from NVRAM. (Note: Some NetCache devices don't have NVRAM, so they will clear their caches and resume caching operations upon restart.)
If I were to compute the "cache size" for a filer, which would I chose? I'm looking for the total size of the read and write cache for the filer.
"system board memory" is the best way indicator of "cache size". However, you'll note that the O/S consumes part of that memory as do data structures used to maintain the cache's consistency.
Therefore, "cache size" is always smaller than "system board memory". But, it's a good indicator.
-- Randy