Re: [Bitcoin-development] Scalability issues

[grarpamp <grarpamp@gmail.com>]

> You are however using a filesystem (ZFS)

I'm aware of the memory and i386 issues, and going shopping.

> The bdb backend Bitcoin uses
> does many I/O operations, and writes them synchronously to disk, killing
> whatever caching your filesystem provides.

Sync... yes, depending on the rate/sec and size of them, that would be an
issue. "Enterprise" systems with UPS, good disk, etc assume writes are
committed upon return, eliminating need for software apps to do sync. So
I need to figure out how to turn that off?

Is sync on for everything, or just the wallet (where it could be argued as ok)?

> For those who run a large
> database on ZFS, I believe it is advised to put ZFS's intent log on a
> separate SSD-backed device, to get fast synchronous writes.

Guessing bitcoin's writes are small? So a RAM dev intent would be cheaper
and faster than SSD for that.

> on switching the bitcoin block verifier to use a different style database
> layout ("ultraprune"), which is smaller, faster, and will support pruning.

I'll try to search that. If it's anything like "delete old blocks/tx/coins that
have both been validated in the past and fully spent in the future since we
no longer need to validate further back beyond them [1]", that would be
interesting.

[1] Unless you're a historian or some usage other than casual transactions.