Hi everyone,
We're looking at investing in a new storage system in order to run
PostgreSQL and the advice we are getting is to move away from our current
SAN solution to a NAS solution. Can anyone offer any advice/experience on
using NAS devices to run a PostgreSQL database?
I have seen posts on the lists suggesting that NFS could not offer the
correct semantics to ensure database consistency in terms of flushing data
to disk, but the pre-sales technical team insist it can, even though I
pointed out on their demo system that even MS-SQL server won't install its
data directory on the NAS without a special driver. So have there been any
improvements in the NFS protocol that would make this the case? I suspect
not, but thought I would ask on the list to make sure.
Secondly, we currently run the database over 1Gb fibre. Assuming that NFS is
a no-go, the other solution is to use the NAS and run iSCSI over 1Gb
Ethernet. Slightly off-topic for pgsql-general, but can anyone offer any
performance comparisons between our existing 1Gb SAN and a 1Gb NAS solution?
My feeling is that the SAN will be faster but I have no real way of testing.
Finally, if it helps, the database server is a dual Opteron with 12Gb RAM
running FC4.
Thanks in advance,
Mark.
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