IS it possible to create a ram drive

[joepalm]

We are looking to install another GB ram in Our database server and setup as a ram drive to run our database application, is this possible?

Thanks

JP

 

[dentarthurdent]

I have heard of such main-memory databases but not used them. My guess is that there is nothing to stop you creating a ramdrive and moving databases into it but you must remember that most databases are designed to journalise transactions and write them back to the disk. This is often a low level function and may well not take kindly to being 'fooled' into writing to ram, unless the database was designed from the outset to do this (extremeDB).
Another approach may be to use something like HyperOS to load the whole of windows + apps into RAM. I believe this can be made to work quite well in some circumstances.
Whether any of this is advisable is another story. What if there's a power interruption or application exception ? What happens to volatile data?

 

[compgirlfhredi]

Possible--yes:

http://www.speedcorp.net/guides/ramdrive/

One disadvantage to a RAM drive is that it's temporary. Like all RAM in the computer, when you turn off the power, the contents of the RAM drive disappear. If you're only copying programs to the RAM drive and running them from there, then there's no problem; original copies of the programs still exist on the hard drive. But if you create or modify anything on the RAM drive, you must copy it back to the hard drive before you turn off the computer.

For Temp Internet files works great!

 

[joepalm]

Thanks for the replies, I will have to investigate the impact on our Database and if the whole effort will be worth it.

JP