# Squid cache on RAM drive: good thing and possible?



## carmik (Aug 13, 2020)

Hello all,

my FreeBSD 11.4 box is working as a firewall (3 lan segments), dhcp/dns server and caching proxy with URL filtering (squid with squidGuard).

This is on "plain" hardware: just a i5 4570 with a single HDD. The 8gb squid cache is on a separate 10Gb partition, to minimize UFS corruption. 

I've been thinking: this box has 8Gb of RAM, mostly unutilized. Would it be a good idea to have a RAM disk on each boot, say 6Gb, and host the squid cache on it? If so, would squid create the initial cache subdirectories for that feat or should I somehow cater for it? 

Goal:
* minimize hdd wear and, hence, possibilities of mechanical failure
* minimize times to read / write data to/from disk cache on cache hits/misses, respectively

Assumptions:
* losing cache at each startup is no biggie: this system has an uptime of months. And since most sites are secure http nowadays, no info gets cached anyways...

Thanks in advance for any info provided.


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## diizzy (Aug 13, 2020)

No, tune squid (if needed) and you already have file system caching so you're just over-engineering your setup.


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## carmik (Aug 13, 2020)

Thanks for the info, I'll leave things as they are then.


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