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Linux 5.1 and non-volatile storage as RAM
HowLowCanYouGo
Member
in General
https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-5-1-arrives/
So, with non-volatile storage being supported as RAM, what does this mean for KVM and OpenVZ providers? I could see getting a 8GB "RAM" VPS but could see the oversubscribed "RAM" demand going to non-volatile storage as a backup?
Comments
The future for low-mid devices....
Edit1: So a reboot can't solve our problems?
Maybe. I'd be interested to see how that works. I'd imagine it would be something like swap?
I think that is intended for Optane DIMMs which are way outside of the LET price range.
NVDIMM's are like $800 for 16GB.
Francisco
We will have to benchmark "RAM" I suppose, lol
Much less than that for Optane, around $900 for 128GB but closer to $3K for 256GB. Still too much for LET though.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/14180/pricing-of-intels-optane-dc-persistent-memory-modules-leaks
I am not too sure if it is expensive.
$5 per 4GB
128GB / 4GB * $5 = $160
ROI in $900/$160 = 6months
$4 per 4GB
128GB / 4GB * $5 = $128
ROI in $900/$128 = 7months
Quite attractive. You can pretty much achieve 1GB per $1 (as add-on RAM)
The question is how fast can these optane "RAM" be in real world application, but should be faster than SSD swap
In 6 -12 months, it would be $600 - $800 for 128GB, even more doable.
Non volatile storage will never be as fast as RAM, only even remote option is NVMe.
But, you can't afford burning your persistent storage too soon.
There is an even more exotic option of gaining more ram out of nowhere - zero ram compressed swap into ram, which can already be done. Anyhow nothing beats adding more RAM, planned usage and not using bloatware.
So, it's all potatoe cakes and cabbage slices, mixed with chicken sausage.
Is compressed RAM something that can be done with OpenVZ or KVM providers?
I noticed compressed RAM in macOS and Windows 10, but never researched it. Is it supposed to be a layer between RAM and disk swap? At least compressed RAM can be uncompressed faster than using swap?
In KVM it can be done on the guest machine itself, OpenVZ perhaps only if the provider somehow configures and enables it. It's some percentage of available ram pre-allocated for putting the swap partition, which due to Lempel-Ziv compression can be bigger than the allocated size.
It utilizes CPU for compression/decompression...
Haven't done a lot of benchmarking, just enabled zram on some deployments and in one embedded project, saw it works and moved on.