What is faster hard drive system for a server, SSD, SAS, RamDisk?
Someone asked on Server Fault:
I hope this is the correct section, this is my first time here, I have a question please.
I think that a lot of people are asking this question in this period.
We are managing a server of a game with a big exchange of data (minecraft) and we have to buy a new server, but we have to find where is the best way to mantain the map.
We have three option in Ubuntu enviroment, Ramdisk, SSD and SAS, do you know who will be the faster to mantain the map (1.9gb, but a lot of small files, huge transfer)?
I am not really an expert of this, so if I can I would like to add the link of the server that we would like to rent, so maybe you can be more precise, if I can put the link please tell me, I will delete it. http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/ex4s
Thanks for your time and sorry about my bad english. Best Regards,
Paolo
P.s I don’t know nothing more, so please explain everything :(.
I posted the following answer, which was chosen as the accepted answer and received 6 upvotes:
You will need to take into account the pro/con for each of the things you’ve listed.
Ramdisk
Fastest option you listed, but it will still require a real HD to save data to. If the server goes off-line, anything on the RAMDISK will be lost unless it is persisted to long-term storage. Also requires a lot of memory on your server.
SSD
Very fast, and good for tons of small IO. Very expensive and not much capacity.
SAS (I assume you mean 10k/15k drives, not 7.2k NL-SAS)
Still pretty fast, comes in much larger sizes.
What I would do
If it were me, I would start some monitoring, to see if disk IO is really a limiting factor, for a game server, my guess is that its CPU or network that is your limiting factor. If you find that disk IO is responsible, I would personally grab a pair of 15k SAS drives and run them in RAID-1 (or if money is no object, I’d get 4 or 8 and run them in RAID-10).
Originally posted on Server Fault — 6 upvotes (accepted answer). Licensed under CC BY-SA.
