The one problem with RAMdisks is that when power is cut, everything on the ramdisk is gone. forever. period. RAM only works when it is powered, unlike hard drives or solid-state drives that can retain informations after power is cut. A way around this is by using a UPS (uninterruptable power source) which is basically a giant battery box hooked up to the wall, that supplies power to the server when there is a power outage. Battery life is about 30 minutes ( I know, terrible) but hopefully it will last just long enough through a temporary outage. If it doesn't, the server will have time to shut down and save all the files before power is lost.
Another thing I would like to add, is have a script/program that syncs the server files from the RAMdisk onto a normal hard drive for periodic saves and backups. This way, if something goes buggy in the RAMdisk, there will be a slow, but physical hard drive backup. The use of an SSD for storage is completely eliminated, because a RAMdisk compared to one of the fastest SSD's out there (costing excess of thousands) is about 50-150 times faster.
Speed of average DRAM: 2-20GB/s
Speed of average/fast SSD: 50-200MB/s
(NOTE: "Mb" Means megabits per second, while "MB" (big "B") means megabytes in a second! There is a big difference!
1 megabyte = 8 megabits
I discovered a problem, where the server map size can range huge… probably 10GB by itself, at a minimum. We can solve this problem… either with a special caching method, where the core server and the plugins are run in the RAM ( I know RAM is used for this, but storing the core components and certain chunks of common map pieces "like spawn, big cities, etc." can be stored in the ramdisk. I know it normally seems counterproductive- cache is in the RAM by itself, but if you stored the entire server file(s) inside the ram, everything will be faster.
Also, SSD have something called "cell wear", which basically means the ability to store information in flash memory (solid state) will diminish over time, because flash memory is essentially "burning" silicon to store it without power (think like a burnt scar). The newer and smaller SSD technology gets, the MORE UNRELIABLE
SSD's actually become. True, a hard drive could have physical damage, but as long as the physical moving parts stay intact, the platter will never wear out.
It may or may not be a good idea, but RAM should be cheap nowadays. In the future, the reliability of SSD's will continue to go down, and this may be a feasible option.
Good day zerg. Go think!
