bad performance on Solaris 10 - Mailing list pgsql-performance

From Chris Mair
Subject bad performance on Solaris 10
Date
Msg-id 1144111178.3723.80.camel@dell.home.lan
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Responses Re: bad performance on Solaris 10
Re: bad performance on Solaris 10
Re: bad performance on Solaris 10
List pgsql-performance
Hi,

I've got a somewhat puzzling performance problem here.

I'm trying to do a few tests with PostgreSQL 8.1.3 under Solaris
(an OS I'm sort of a newbie in).

The machine is a X4100 and the OS is Solaris 10 1/06 fresh install
according to manual. It's got two SAS disks in RAID 1, 4GB of RAM.

Now the problem is: this box is *much* slower than I expect.

I've got a libpg test program that happily inserts data
using PQputCopyData().

It performs an order of magnitude worse than the same thing
on a small Sun (Ultra20) running Linux. Or 4 times slower than
an iBook (sic!) running MacOS X.

So, I've this very bad feeling that there is something basic
I'm missing here.

Following are some stats:

"sync; dd; sync" show these disks write at 53 MB/s => good.

iostat 1 while my test is running says:

   tty        sd0           sd1           sd2           sd5
cpu
 tin tout kps tps serv  kps tps serv  kps tps serv  kps tps serv   us sy
wt id
   1   57   0   0    0    0   0    0    0   0    0  1809  23   70    0
1  0 99
   0  235   0   0    0    0   0    0    0   0    0  2186 223   14    1
1  0 99
   0   81   0   0    0    0   0    0    0   0    0  2488 251   13    1
1  0 98
   0   81   0   0    0    0   0    0    0   0    0  2296 232   15    1
0  0 99
   0   81   0   0    0    0   0    0    0   0    0  2416 166    9    1
0  0 98
   0   81   0   0    0    0   0    0    0   0    0  2528 218   14    1
1  0 99
   0   81   0   0    0    0   0    0    0   0    0  2272 223   15    1
0  0 99

If I interpret this correctly the disk writes at not more than 2.5
MB/sec while the Opterons do nothing => this is bad.

I've tried both, a hand compile with gcc and the solarispackages
from pgfoundry.org => same result.

Eons ago PCs had those "turbo" switches (it was never totally clear
why they put them there in the first place, anyway). I've this bad
feeling there's a secret "turbo" switch I can't spot hidden somewhere
in Solaris :/


Bye, Chris.


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