The v3.10 kernel I used in the article also now supports bcache in the mainline kernel which now makes that a compelling solution as well. I looked at flashcac

The v3.10 kernel I used in the article also now supports bcache in the mainline kernel which now makes that a compelling solution as well. I looked at flashcache, but I maintain enough custom kernels for my job, don't want to do that for my personal life as well. (Maybe if I was still in my Gentoo obsession days...) I think I'll checkout bcache in the future, since it's sitting there waiting to be turned on with Linux v3.10. My only concern is whether or not I can just add ssd caching to an existing filesystem, or if I need to copy all the data to the newly created bcache/flashcache block device. With dm-cache it just sits on top and makes the transition to (and from) a 10TB cached volume as simple as a 1GB cached volume. No backing up the data somewhere and copying it. For personal use dm-cache seems to fit the bill, for now. My sights are really set on the file system doing this more intelligently (think file level instead of block level) then device-mapper ever could. I'm mostly waiting on this btrfs to add hot-migration: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTM3Njg http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTM3Njg Now if this was a specific purpose server (ie database?) then maybe flashcache or bcache would make a more compelling performance argument up front and warrant the hassles they require.