Len, Begging to differ, as is my wont...
>wastes main CPU mips. I understand that you're getting at the offloading of certain tasks to I/O processors, but RAM drives will still blow 'em out of the water. The higher CPU cost is a non-issue, as the reads and writes are completed much, much faster. And much of what the I/O processor is great at offloading--RAID computation, cache management, event logging, etc.--aren't even needed at all for dynamic data. For RAM drives to perform optimally, the RAM bus in the machine should be SDRAM or DDR. Mission-critical data such as user mailboxes still needs to be on a high-powered RAID card, so it's not like I'm saying they're outmoded! >Do this at least for the IMail spool+log directory, which is really >where the read/write traffic jam is worst. Web Messaging is where the traffic jam is at its worst, due to its reliance on the swapfile. Put the swapfile in RAM and watch it blow you away. There's no better way to argue it. >There�s a good probability that an incoming SMTP messaging will be >written to the cache...without ever touching the spool disk. On an unloaded system, a very good chance. With Web Messaging backed by a huge, constantly changing swapfile, a *lot* less of a chance. (Unless you've got multiple RAID cards/caches, which'll help, but still isn't going to beat running from RAM.) Sandy Please visit http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html to be removed from this list. An Archive of this list is available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/
