Re: bad performance on Solaris 10 - Mailing list pgsql-performance

Chris Mair wrote:
> 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 :/
>

I ran across something like this on a Solaris 8, RAID1 system, and
switching off logging on filesystem containing postgres made a huge
difference!

Now solaris 8 is ancient history, however see:

http://bugs.opensolaris.org/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6238533

Apparently there can still be issues with logging without forcedirectio
(which is the default I think).

I suspect that making a *separate* filesystem for the pg_xlog directory
and mounting that logging + forcedirectio would be a nice way to also
get performance while keeping the advantages of logging + file
buffercache for the *rest* of the postgres components.
Cheers

Mark