Add memory for disk or file-system caching

Windows® has a dynamic disk buffer cache. As much main memory as possible is used to cache blocks of data files that have been updated by user processes. Periodically, the buffer cache is written to disk. The cache size increases when you add more memory to the host.

This feature speeds up disk I/O significantly; making full use of it is an important factor in good VOB host performance. An inadequate disk buffer cache can degrade performance significantly and produce symptoms such as these:
  • Extended periods required for scrubber and vob_scrubber execution
  • Very slow omake or clearmake builds
  • Clients experience RPC time-out errors

In addition to increasing the size of the disk (file system) cache, it is also important for as much as possible of this cache be reserved for VOB database pages. Therefore, you should offload other I/O activities from the VOB server. Examples of I/O activities that you might offload from the VOB server:

  • Moving your VOB storage pools to a NAS or other NFS server.
  • Keeping view_server processes off the VOB host.

For more information about the relationship of main memory to VOB size, see VOB host configuration guidelines.