[MINECRAFT] SSD vs. Ramdisk (or both)

Post Reply
Spifft
A regular
A regular
Posts: 42
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC40BgXanDqOYoVCYFDSTfHA
Joined: Thu Feb 17, 2011 2:42 pm

[MINECRAFT] SSD vs. Ramdisk (or both)

Post by Spifft »

Hi NFo team,

Just a quick question based on a big concern. I am aware your servers hosting Minecraft use SSD's for a good reason. But Have you checked into Ramdisk at all?

I am hearing a lot of server operators discuss this lately and people are saying that SSD is really only going to benefit machines that run multiple servers and that Ramdisk still heavily out performs any SSD in terms of "chunk loading" (the world in game).

Have you guys tried Ramdisk on a large server?
If so, what were the results?
Do you have any plans of making it an additional option of purchase?

Thanks,

Kevin
User avatar
kraze
Former staff
Former staff
Posts: 4362
Joined: Fri Sep 17, 2010 9:06 am
Location: California

Re: [MINECRAFT] SSD vs. Ramdisk (or both)

Post by kraze »

From my understanding of a ramdisk it basically just keeps everything in ram. There is no doubt that ram is extremely fast but keeping everything in it probably isn't the best idea. On top of this we do use extremely high quality SSD in raid.

I personally haven't done some performance test but with how we have things set up, I am not sure if any performance gain would come from doing that.
@Kraze^NFo> Juski has a very valid point
@Juski> Got my new signature, thanks!
@Kraze^NFo> Out of context!
@Juski> Doesn't matter!
@Juski> You said I had a valid point! You can't take it back now! It's out there!
User avatar
Edge100x
Founder
Founder
Posts: 12945
Joined: Thu Apr 18, 2002 11:04 pm
Location: Seattle
Contact:

Re: [MINECRAFT] SSD vs. Ramdisk (or both)

Post by Edge100x »

When it comes to file reads, there's no advantage to using a ramdisk. This is because the OS already uses all otherwise-unused RAM as a big disk cache. Our customers benefit from this, since our machines often have a large amount of free memory. (Additionally, even without a primed cache, current-generation SSDs are fast enough that loading directly from disk does not have a noticeable performance impact.)

When it comes to file writes, using a ramdisk is not a good idea, because it's volatile. In the case of a machine crash -- a rare possibility, but a possibility -- anything in RAM is lost. Writes are also already cached briefly by the OS, so using a ramdisk does not usually increase performance when the I/O subsystem could keep up, either. SSDs easily keep up with Minecraft's write frequency and volume, and even magnetic drives can usually keep up with a single server's output.

The bottom line is that we definitely won't be using ramdisks for Minecraft servers, and you should avoid hosts that do. The only reason that anyone should consider a ramdisk is if the machine does not have an SSD and the disk can't keep up with their writes; in that case, it would also be very important to sync the two frequently to reduce the damage from a machine crash.
Post Reply