Features/SSDcache

Feature Name SSDcache

Summary

Using recent kernel (3.9 and later) features for (fast) SSD caching of (slow) ordinary hard disks.

Owner

• Name: Rolf Fokkens
• Email: rolf@rolffokkens.nl

Current status

• Targeted release: Fedora 19
• Last updated: 20130523
• Percentage of completion: 0%

Detailed Description

Recent Linux kernels support the use of Solid State Drives as caches for rotational hard disks. Because the high cost per GB for SSD devices this feature may bring the best of both: fast end big yet affordable storage capacity. Linux kernel 3.9 introduced dm-cache, kernel 3.10 introduces bcache.

Benefit to Fedora

In general operating systems increasingly (will) support SSD caching, because of it's value to users: an affordable solution for both fast and large storage.

Scope

Several tools are in scope:

• Dracut (to support SSD caching for root FS)
• Anaconda (to support SSD caching in clean installs)
• bcache-tools (a new package to support bcache)

User Experience

Users will experience great disk performance without explicitly having to decide what to store an fast and what to store on slow media.

Dependencies

This feature relies completely on the packages as mentioned before:

• dracut
• anaconda
• bcache-tools
• kernel

Contingency Plan

None necessary, revert to previous release behaviour.

Documentation

The feauture is very new, some documention is in the kernel sources.

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Comments and Discussion

• See Talk:Features/SSDcache