On Sun, 2004-07-11 at 19:37, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Doug McNaught wrote:
> > jseymour@linxnet.com (Jim Seymour) writes:
> >
> > > Oh, if you're accepting punctuation nits ;), in most cases, the comma
> > > should come after "but," not before it. So your sentence should read
> > > "PostgreSQL will run on almost any hardware but, if you are..."
> >
> > Wrong. :)
> >
> > You are sentenced to go read Strunk and White again.
>
> Text adjusted:
>
> <P>Because PC hardware is mostly compatible, people tend to believe that
> all PC hardware is of equal quality. It is not. ECC RAM, SCSI, and
> quality motherboards are more reliable and have better performance than
> less expensive hardware. PostgreSQL will run on almost any hardware,
> but if you are building a server where you are concerned about reliability
> and performance it is wise to research your hardware options thoroughly. Our
> email lists can be used to discuss hardware options and tradeoffs.</P>
Further, a system should be burned in and have all the components
thoroughly tested. Brand new computers can, and often do, have broken
or misbehaving hardware. While relatively simple tasks like installing
an operating system or browsing the web only use a small portion of a
computer's resources, running a database relies on all of it working
properly. Basically, it all boils down to to this, if you're not sure
of your hardware, you shouldn't be building a database server with it,
and you can't be sure of your hardware without testing it.