RAMSAN

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Sections of the EVE Online database, in order to speed up read/write operations and reduce issues of concurrency arising from disk latency, are stored on RAMSAN units. While similar to solid state drives now arriving on the marketplace, RAMSANs are large RAM arrays with high-speed controller boards, hard disk backups and battery backups rather than permanent NVRAM (Non-Volatile RAM) units. NVRAM tends to have fast (but relatively slow compared to RAM) access times, and so by effectively keeping the whole database for some sols in what amounts to a shared RAM drive, the database can be rapidly accessed without having to wait for disk seek operations or head movement.

Two of these units were added to provide high-concurrency capability to important areas of the EVE database, such as the Jita node and market. More recently a slower but larger-capacity unit has been added for additional performance boosts in the cluster.