Hardware RAM drive configurations and interest

[link3of5master]

sorry if this thread is in the wrong spot, i am new to posting things on forum sites. now on to the post

-So i am just testing the waters out there to see if there is a lot of people interested in hardware ram drives because my friends and I were thinking about making one and maybe see if we should start a business selling them. Next
-we have already made DDR3 RAM sticks that current specs at 8GB clocked at 1600MHz and it cost us 12 dollars in materials. We were looking at selling the memory for $20. Since DDR4 is now out there, we started looking to see how much it would cost to build a 16GB 1866MHz DDR4 RAM stick, the estimation is $26.28. Probably sell it for 35$.

-Now on to the ram drive its self. we were thinking about having 8 slots that each support 16gb ram so the drive itself would be capable of 128GB.
The Drive should come with memory and thinking 32GB of the DDR4 that we would make should be fine for the start. It would also have a somewhat small battery backup so if the power shut off the data would still be there plus having an extra port for a dc power source.

-ram drive config, this is where none of us agree on is how the data should be transported.
config#1 having 3 SATA-III ports so you can raid it and so windows can pick it up like a normal drive.

config#2 having 1 SATA-III port and a fiber channel that is connected to the pci express bus to run the data though for extra bandwidth (sata port just for mounting drive purposes)

config#3 having everything on a pci express card with also just one sata port so windows finds the drive.

All config options that talk about pci express should come in x1/x4/x8 and x16. The device will come with backup software that we currently use to keep are data backup.
Taking a look at the big picture the package would have
2x16gb ddr4 @1866MHz (starter memory)
8 slots (2 in current use)
backup software
battery backup
one DC power line for extra backup protection
and then one of the config listed for data transfer

picking the first option for data transfer the estimated cost to build one without the memory included is $90. so add in the cost for starter memory and about $140.

The questions are, which configuration would be the best to sell to the consumer, would this even be something most people would be interested in even buying or consider. (pretty much would we be able to move this out of the niche market if it had the right feature set)

I know at work my boss would love to have something like this for a network drive so high traffic data could be used and shared much easier without bogging down the servers.

Thank you in advance for your input

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Whatever memory controller you're using, it should support ECC, and so should the memory. I couldn't imagine buying a drive with no basic error correction.

 

[link3of5master]

The drive will have support for ECC but it's up to the buyer if they want to be cheap and put in non-ECC memory

 

[Cerb]

So i am just testing the waters out there to see if there is a lot of people interested in hardware ram drives because my friends and I were thinking about making one and maybe see if we should start a business selling them.

No. They're dead to consumers and SMBs. Even if you wear NAND SSDs out every so many months, they're still dirt cheap compared to RAM Drives. You can buy RAM-based SSDs still, and I believe there are now flash-backed ones, now. But, they cost what you'd expect for high-end server gear.

Here's a consumer iteration, before SSDs and 64-bit OSes destroyed the market for it:
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=2180#ov

-Now on to the ram drive its self. we were thinking about having 8 slots that each support 16gb ram so the drive itself would be capable of 128GB.

As a user, why not just use software, and buy the RAM? It's going to cost as much for the RAM either way, and it will be faster if directly attached to the CPU.

-ram drive config, this is where none of us agree on is how the data should be transported.
config#1 having 3 SATA-III ports so you can raid it and so windows can pick it up like a normal drive.

But then it's going to be slow enough that you might as well just load up on RAM and use SSDs in a RAID.

config#2 having 1 SATA-III port and a fiber channel that is connected to the pci express bus to run the data though for extra bandwidth (sata port just for mounting drive purposes)

Then, it's jst going to compete with buying more system RAM, as per above.

config#3 having everything on a pci express card with also just one sata port so windows finds the drive.

SATA/SAS would be a no-go. SAS ones existed a couple years ago, and still do, and those companies already have partners, distributors, support deals, etc..

picking the first option for data transfer the estimated cost to build one without the memory included is $90. so add in the cost for starter memory and about $140.

I doubt it, by the time you validate everything is working, and get drivers made.

The questions are, which configuration would be the best to sell to the consumer, would this even be something most people would be interested in even buying or consider. (pretty much would we be able to move this out of the niche market if it had the right feature set)

None. 64-bit OSes, SSDs, Intel RAID 0 being fast enough for most bandwidth hogs, LSI RAID 0 being fast enough for the extreme bandwidth hogs, and LR-DIMMs coming up on the server side of things, all make the whole thing moot.

I know at work my boss would love to have something like this for a network drive so high traffic data could be used and shared much easier without bogging down the servers.

Have you guys looked at what is out there, and/or reconsidered your configurations? You can put multiple GBs of RAM on a RAID card these days, and use it writing with a BBU, then have a NAND SSD cache drive, all to back up a RAID 10...or skip the cache drive and make the RAID out of NAND SSDs.

These products have existed for a long time. I remember seeing magazine ads for some back in the late 80s, as a kid. The advent of wear-leveling for flash drives as it shrunk to more affordable sizes, and COTS OSes and hardware capable of efficiently caching GBs upon GBs of small IOs, turned it from a niche market for content creators to a niche market for a small subset of transaction-heavy server owners.

 

[Lorne]

I would be interested and completely volitile would be fine, But Cerb has a point in most aspects.
To be competative in performance and cost over existing hardware It would have to be PCIe over SATA as even mediocre ramdrives are 3+GBs
DDR3 memory, DDR4 will have larger capacity but are going to be very expensive for awhile and most will want to use DDR3 dims they have laying around or on sale cheap.

If you cant sell the product for less then the price of a motherboard swap to get more dimm slots then it wont be viable.

There is a company out there that already has SATA SSD dimm drives and I think that they may have just come out with one that does not require the SATA connection and are just using the ram controller (w/driver).

 

[geoag02]

I would be very interested in buying a hardware ram drive if you can make it usb and get a raspberry pi to put its swap partition on it.