[fedora-arm] Opinions on flash or network drives for development work

[Gordan Bobic]

On 08/01/2013 03:42 PM, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> I'm now doing quite a lot of compilation on my Chromebook and my Trim
> Slice.  It's OK, provided that two processes don't try to hit the disk
> at the same time, at which point everything grinds to a halt.
>
> I'm using cheap SanDisk cards in both (not exactly sure of the model,
> but they're the cheapest branded ones).
>
> Question is, would I be better to:
>
>   - Use cards such as the "SanDisk Extreme Pro"
>     http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005LFT3QG
>     (Does it make a difference, or is it designed to separate me from
>      my hard-earned money?)

Yes. They are one of few SD/CF/USB flash devices that offer performance 
comparable to mechanical disks on random writes. See here:
http://www.altechnative.net/2012/01/25/flash-module-benchmark-collection-sd-cards-cf-cards-usb-sticks/
(link at the bottom of the article, scroll down to the 2nd table for 
random read/write performance).

Another thing you can do is use nilfs2 for your compile FS-es to make 
all the writes always linear. This effectively negates the poor 
random-write performance, at the expense of garbage collection churn. I 
used this approach for a while on my AC100s, but eventually I just got a 
SuperTalent RC8 USB stick which is a full fat SATA SSD with a USB-SATA 
adapter in front of it, in USB stick form factor. Very expensive, but 
extremely performant. Performance figures for it are in the list linked 
above. Also, you may be interested to see this:

http://www.altechnative.net/2012/02/07/morebetter-internal-storage-on-the-toshiba-ac100-part-2/

>   - Try again with using network drive, eg. iSCSI?  NFS?  NBD?  gluster ..?
>     (Note: the Chromebook kernel doesn't support NFS)

Or use one of the SSDs with both SATA and USB interfaces, such as some 
of the Integral Z series models. That gives you a cost effective SSD you 
can run off of USB.

I used various network block device and file system options on my build 
far, which good success, it should work fine over wired ethernet.

>   - Is there a good performing network device which is less horrible to
>     configure than iSCSI?

iSCSI is not that bad, you need about 5 config lines on the server, and 
bout 2 lines on the command line on the client. NBD might be a tiny bit 
simpler.

Gordan