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Figure 8 provides a comparison of L3 cache with the other OneFS SmartPools SSD usage strategies. The principal benefits of L3 cache are around metadata read activity, user data read activity, and assistance with Job Engine performance. While L3 cache does not directly improve write performance, offloading random reads to SSD does have the additional benefit of freeing up the hard drives for write I/O. L3 cache is implemented at the node pool level and designed to be simple to use.
In contrast to L3 cache, with SmartPools Data on SSD strategy, only the files specifically targeted to SSD benefit from the increased read and write performance. The remainder of the data on the node pool lives exclusively on hard disk and does not benefit from SSD. SmartPools Data on SSD strategy is licensed functionality and is typically configured using file pool policies, or, occasionally, manually through the isi set command.
Compared to L3 cache, SmartPools SSD strategies in general typically require more complex configuration and must be monitored closely so as not to exceed the available SSD capacity.
* Data located on SSD benefits. Other data on node pool does not benefit.