What is the consensus, use RAMdisk or not together with SSD?
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I'm about to move from a virtual installation to a "bare metal" one.
I bought a mini-computer from china to use as a dedicated box for this + a 250GB samsung 850 EVO and 16GB RAM.
So is there some gain in using a RAMdisk or should I skip that part?
(On my VM I used a RAMdisk, but with every reboot I lost lightsquid data and other stuff too which is a bit annoying)
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Don't even bother with any other option.
Use the smallest/cheapest Samsung or Intel SSD that you can find. End.I'm about to move from a virtual installation to a "bare metal" one.
I bought a mini-computer from china to use as a dedicated box for this + a 250GB samsung 850 EVO and 16GB RAM.
So is there some gain in using a RAMdisk or should I skip that part?
(On my VM I used a RAMdisk, but with every reboot I lost lightsquid data and other stuff too which is a bit annoying)
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In my personal experience using lots of cheap and old stuff, you should be more concerned with stuff like true sine wave UPS, dust filters, reliable fans, and reliable power supplies, especially considering that the 3-d Samsung SSDs have some pretty phenomenal specs, you may well see one of the aforementioned items be a greater cause for concern.
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In my personal experience using lots of cheap and old stuff, you should be more concerned with stuff like true sine wave UPS, dust filters, reliable fans, and reliable power supplies, especially considering that the 3-d Samsung SSDs have some pretty phenomenal specs, you may well see one of the aforementioned items be a greater cause for concern.
I ended up with no RAMdisk enabled.
My thoughts was that RAMdisk was more for the ones using a memory-card or the like.
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True sine UPS is not a requirement for 90% of PSU. I have yet to find a PSU that has not work with simulated sine wave.
If you know electronics, you would understand that one way or another, the AC gets converted to DC, so as long as the input is good and clean enough, the PSU will do the rest (this, of course does not apply to motors and other induction devices that do require the sine wave or that need to see the 0 volts cross).Dust filters are good, but you should better yet, open and clean the device once a year or so.
Good fans should be norm but today, with the low power CPUS and SSDs, you don't need any fans for a small appliance.
For PSUs, don't buy the cheapest, but everything else would do (buy 80%+ bronze efficient ones). Only 1 or 2 PSUs have ever failed me. They were the cheap kind. Once you put the better quality on a UPS and don't let them overheat (check fan, blast dust), they just work.Electronics are very resilient today, just buy the little better kind with solid capacitors, give them clean power, control the heat and they will work for years.
(My experience comes from 25+ years of building, installing and maintaining computers, systems, networks, routers and small electronic devices/appliances).
In my personal experience using lots of cheap and old stuff, you should be more concerned with stuff like true sine wave UPS, dust filters, reliable fans, and reliable power supplies, especially considering that the 3-d Samsung SSDs have some pretty phenomenal specs, you may well see one of the aforementioned items be a greater cause for concern.
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True sine wave UPS will incorporate other important features not commonly found on cheaper UPSs. For example, both under- and over-frequency and voltage conditions are often not protected since the only reason to use square or simulated sine wave is to save money, the other important protection features will also be removed to save money. Over the life of the equipment, infrequent and brief brown-out conditions can cause eventual component failure.
In fact, I recently experienced an under-voltage condition and all of my APC smart UPSs indicated that they were in correction mode, but my inexpensive next grade down APC UPS that I use only for a cheap AP wasn't doing anything.
Dust filters also protect from the rare massive dust events. I experienced insulation spontaneously falling from the overhead along with all decades of dust and spiderwebs.
Good fans are rarely the norm on cheap pre-built systems. Same goes for PSUs, and even internal cables, most especially SATA cables.
The OP asked about reliability concerns with regards to a 3-d NAND SSD that has an incredibly high endurance, and my larger point is that the other components should be of more concern than the drive since they will likely fail before the drive does, and may even destroy the drive in the process.
Note that functioning with simulated sine wave is different from and should not be confused long-term reliability. It has been some time since I did the research for myself, but my conclusion was the transformers and electronics will function better with true sine wave.
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A simple check for folks thinking about a non-sine UPS solution. Check the temperature of the power supply on wall current and again on the non-sine UPS. Even better check it with the UPS batteries at 75% charge levels as that can generate even more unwanted heat.
We have had issues with several power supplies cooking when running on UPS power, they had run for months on wall power with no issues.
Some power supplies, particularly some with PFC do not play well with non-sine power. We had to replace a number of HP desktop power supplies as the computers crashed on switching to inverter power.
Full-sine or near-sine units are cheap enough that I'd not consider less today.
