Our Network Appliance upgrade went well, with
January 25, 1998 – 10:43 am by adminSun Jan 25 10:43:48 PST 1998 — Our Network Appliance upgrade went well, with total downtime of 21 minutes between 4:05AM and 4:26AM. The Network Appliance uses it’s main memory to cache disk array read requests, and with the 64 megs in the default configuration, it could only cache about 2 minutes worth of data. It’s now caching 12-14 minutes worth of read data, which means that it will get many more cache hits and thus less time waiting for disks. In addition, we upgraded the write cache from 2 megs to 8 megs of non volatile RAM (NVRAM). The battery backed NVRAM is used to buffer writes so that client hosts receive confirmation of a write immediately, without waiting for disks. Previously, the two megs was getting filled every 2-3 seconds, forcing a write to disk. Now, we’re just writing at the 10 second ‘checkpoint’, which is great. The Network Appliance is currently averaging about 300-400 operations per second, mostly from the main web server’s 1+ million hits per day. Thanks to Scott for handling the late upgrade. -Dane
