On 2011-05-21 Dan Martin wrote:
Is there a way of making your own hybrid? It would be nice to have a 32GB SSD (or several in a RAID) that would act as a cache to slower drives. Some logic would be needed to ensure that the most stale info is written to the mechanical HD when resources were available.
I don't think there is such a thing yet, though the linux community could/would probably come up with something in software if there was a benefit to it. However, the cheaper main RAM gets, the less argument you have for needing a middle SSD cache layer.
On a similar note, I've been thinking a lot about using cheap/small SSD's for swap and journal duty. FS journal activity that happens on all mainstream FS's now could benefit from moving off the same spindles the data is on. Has anyone played with this idea? I'm thinking it would really enhance the speed of things like numerous small file writes.