[nycbug-talk] soekris style boxes for memcached ?

[alex at pilosoft.com]

I think a better idea is to have a single box with *lots* of memory than 
bunch of boxes with a little bit. Note that more recent hardware can 
address more and more memory. Example, soekris (except the latest 500mhz 
ones) are 256M soldered. 5501 soekris can do 1G soldered.

Now, recent server-type motherboards can do 64G. Recent desktop-type 
motherboards can do 16G. 

(it kind of gets expensive to do max memory because 4G sticks are 16x as 
expensive as 1G sticks, ie it doesn't get cheaper with scale)

then there's things like ddrdrive and i-ram
4*1G on each card, stick 5 of them into a server, done/DONE

now that I think about it, the last idea is probably the best $/mb, if 
memcached can be told to use files as storage as opposed to plain memory.

rough calculations: soekris 5501 w/1G: 300$/GB
desktop box (500$) and 4*1G of DDR (250$): 187$/GB
desktop box (500$) and 4*2G of DDR (600$): 137$/GB
desktop box (500$) and 4*4G of DDR (2000$) 156$/GB

server box (1000$) with 16*1G (ecc/reg) (1200$): 137$/GB
server box (1000$) with 16*2G (ecc/reg) (3200$): 131$/GB

desktop box (500$) with 4*1G of DDR(250$) and 5*idrive thingies (750$) 
loaded with 4*1G each (1250$): 114$/GB


-alex