Flash! This just in!
Today marks something of a milestone for the Sun BluePrints Program: the first truly new content published first on the Sun BluePrints Wiki. This represents a significant change in our process: our destiny is now in our own hands, in which we manage the content entirely ourselves using Sun's collection of channels for Wikis, blogs, forums and posting media. First of all, the notion of "monthly edition" is gone: we post content when it is ready. This is a good thing. Now, when we have a new PDF document, we post it ourselves on mediacast.sun.com, and we are able to assign a permalink to it; it is also easier to update this document as minor corrections are made.
There is always a moment of hesitation when one switches to something entirely new. After all, the "old" process worked for nine years. Or, did it? Actually, getting new content and updates posted involved more fuss than sometimes it was worth, and as I have mentioned earlier, our ability to create lists to browse by subject had broken down. No, the old way was dated and limited, and the new way is full of opportunity and power!
Meanwhile, let me introduce our latest article: Optimizing Systems to Use Flash Memory as a Hard Drive Replacement, by Om Narasimhan. We are entering an age for which for which flash memory storage devices, while not exactly cheap, provide significant advantages as a systems storage device. This new blueprint addresses this topic for Linux systems, specifically, although concepts apply to Solaris. To take a quote from the article:
When implemented properly, flash devices can boot systems faster and provide higher performance. Flash devices also naturally stay cooler than hard drives and can operate across a wider range of thermal conditions. However, installing an operating system in the default manner on a flash drive may not result in the best device performance or longevity.
A with using flash memory in place of disk is that the longevity of the flash medium is dependent on how often it is written to. So, it stands to reason that one would want to minimize write activity: that is the central topic of this blueprint. There are a number of useful recommendations here. It is a very readable article that will bring you up to speed on a topic that will have growing importance.
I would like to add one special note. By definition, Sun BluePrints articles are written and backed by Sun engineers. The originator of much of the material in this article left Sun before publication, and therefore is mentioned in the acknowledgments section: Phillip Martin. I want to thank Phillip for providing Om with such an excellent starting point for this blueprint.
