SG-3100 : internal flash storage : suited for cache?

Tommyboy

Hi,

We have bought and configured a Netgate SG3100 with Pfsense for our SMB business. Very happy with it.
I installed some packages such as snort, Squid and Squidguard.

Squid uses a local cache to buffer website information. However is the 8GB local flash storage of the SG3100 suited for using as a cache drive?
Will all the read and write operations have any impact on the lifespan of the drive?

Can someone please advise?

Thx,
Thomas.

gsmornot

@Tommyboy:

Hi,

We have bought and configured a Netgate SG3100 with Pfsense for our SMB business. Very happy with it.
I installed some packages such as snort, Squid and Squidguard.

Squid uses a local cache to buffer website information. However is the 8GB local flash storage of the SG3100 suited for using as a cache drive?
Will all the read and write operations have any impact on the lifespan of the drive?

Can someone please advise?

Thx,
Thomas.

While you wait on a more official reply I’m going to generalize. Squid does not cache https and most sites have moved to https so generally you will be fine. I would however consider adding an ssd long term if you want to use packages with logging.

stephenw10

I would want to use an SSD if you are caching.

The eMMC on the SG-3100 has a high write cycle life, it's not expected to fail within the life of the device. That's with the usual disk write rates pfSense has. We do not do anything special there to lower writes.

However caching to it will increase disk writes significantly and the write life is finite so it must reduce the lifespan.

If you're using Squid/Squidguard just for filtering sites you set it not to cache which would eliminate the issue.

I would be more worried about using all available disk space with snort and squid installed to be honest. That could easily happen if you enable too many snort signatures or allow squid to log too much.

Steve