1. In a computing environment, a system comprising: a RAM-based index; and a storage mechanism configured to maintain data items in pages, with at least some of the pages in a secondary storage device, the storage mechanism configured to access the RAM-based index to determine whether a data item is retrievable, returning information corresponding to one or more pages in which the data item is maintained, the storage mechanism further comprising a RAM-based write buffer configured to maintain data items to be written to the secondary storage device, and the storage mechanism further configured to write a page of data items from the RAM-based write buffer to the secondary storage device on determining that the data items fill a page, or write less than a page of data items from the RAM-based write buffer to the secondary store device when a coalesce time is reached.