Hi Ben ,
>> You mentioned a "Perc" controller, so I'll assume this is a Dell.
>>
>> My advice is to find another supplier. check the archives for Dell.
>>
>> Basically you have no idea what the Perc controller is since it is
>> whatever Dell decides to ship that day.
>>
>> In general though you are going down the right path here. Disks
>> first, memory second, cpu third
>>
>> Dave
>
> Yes I am looking at either the 2950 or the 6850. I think the only
> think that the 6850 really offers me over the 2950 is more
> expandability in the spare processor, and additional memory
I see (in first mail) you plan to use bsd 6.1 on dell2950.
--- flame on
Off topic for postgresql performance , but i'd like to warn you neither
perc5i crap nor network adapter got proper support for bsd 6.1 stable (
dell2950 box )
dmesg -a | grep bce
bce0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
inet6 fe80::213:72ff:fe61:2ef6%bce1 prefixlen 64 tentative scopeid 0x2
bce0: link state changed to UP
bce0: /usr/src/sys/dev/bce/if_bce.c(5032): Watchdog timeout occurred,
resetting!
bce0: link state changed to DOWN
bce0: link state changed to UP
uname -a
FreeBSD xxx 6.1-STABLE FreeBSD 6.1-STABLE #0:
xxx:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/customkenelcompiled-30-Aug-2006 i386
Problem with (latest?) raid perc is that only one logical volume is
supported.
You may find some bits of info on freebsd mailing lists.
At least for n/w card problem i see no solution until now.
3 month old history: due to buggy firmware on maxtor disks sold by dell
2 servers from our server farm having raid5 crashed and data on raid
array was lost.
We were lucky to have proper replication solution.
If you decide to choose 2950, you have to use linux instead of bsd 6.1 .
Also buy 2 boxes instead of 1 and set up slony replication for redundancy.
go dell , go to hell.
--- flame off
good luck!
regards, alvis
