Re: performance on new linux box

On Jul 15, 2010, at 9:30 AM, Scott Carey wrote:

>> Many raid controllers are smart enough to always turn off write caching on the drives, and also disable the feature
ontheir own buffer without a BBU. Add a BBU, and the cache on the controller starts getting used, but *not* the cache
onthe drives. 
>
> This does not make sense.
> Write caching on all hard drives in the last decade are safe because they support a write cache flush command
properly. If the card is "smart" it would issue the drive's write cache flush command to fulfill an fsync() or barrier
requestwith no BBU. 

You're missing the point. If the power dies suddenly, there's no time to flush any cache anywhere. That's the entire
pointof the BBU - it keeps the RAM powered up on the raid card. It doesn't keep the disks spinning long enough to flush
caches.