Bcache: Caching beyond just RAM

Completely different design and completely unrelated. I started bcache a couple months before flashcache was announced. Flashcache is simpler and being used in production now. Bcache has, in my opinion, a lot more potential than flashcache.

I was wondering the same thing. As I understand it, the main difference is that with Flashcache you tell it, "here, you're in front of this device". And then you mount the flashcache device.

bcache uses a kernel feature that lets it hook in 'from the side'. So, you still mount the regular device. In theory you can insert/pull/insert bcache as much as you want and your apps would be fine to keep on running. I think that makes it ultimately more powerful.

You could even imagine a workload where you have a bazillion disks that receive sporadic heavy access (maybe remote disks where old data isn't useful), and you could have some sort of monitor that would keep a few SSD's busy by inserting them as bcaches on-demand.