Re: Solid State Drives with PG

On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 2:32 PM, Greg Smith <greg(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> wrote:
> Merlin Moncure wrote:
>>
>> So flash isn't yet a general purpose database solution, and wont be until
>> the write performance problem is fixed in a way that doesn't
>> compromise on volatility.
>
> Flash drives that ship with a supercapacitor large enough to ensure orderly
> write cache flushing in the event of power loss seem to be the only solution
> anyone is making progress on for this right now.  That would turn them into
> something even better even than the traditional approach of using regular
> disk with a battery-backed write caching controller.  Given the relatively
> small write cache involved and the fast write speed, it's certainly feasible
> to just flush at power loss every time rather than what the BBWC products
> do--recover once power comes back.

right -- unfortunately there is likely going to be a fairly high cost
premium on these devices for a good while yet. right now afaik you
only see this stuff on boutique type devices...yeech. I have to admit
until your running expose in this stuff I was led to believe by a few
companies (especially Intel) that flash storage technology was a few
years ahead of where it really was -- it's going to take me a long
time to forgive them for that!

put another way (are you listening intel?): _NO_ drive should be
positioned to the server/enterprise market that does not honor fsync
by default unless it is very clearly documented! This is forgivable
for a company geared towards the consumer market...but Intel...ugh!

merlin