Re: Splitting queries across servers - Mailing list pgsql-general

Suppose that you currently need 16 GB to cache everything now.
I would install (perhaps) 32 GB ram for the initial configuration.

The price of memory drops exponentially, and so waiting for the price to
drop will give a much lower expense for the cost of the RAM.

The reason to double the ram is the expense of upgrading in terms of
labor and downtime for the computer.  That can be very significant.  So
if we double the ram, that should give one or (hopefully) two years
safety margin.

If the database is expected to grow exponentially fast, then that is
another issue.   In such a case, if it can be cost justified, put on the
largest memory volume that is possible given your financial limitations.

In any case, plan to completely replace everything (CPU, memory, disk)
every 5 years or less.

All the value is really in the data.  Because hardware increases compute
power exponentially over time, that also means that the value of the
hardware you bought decreases exponentially over time.

-----Original Message-----
From: pgsql-general-owner@postgresql.org
[mailto:pgsql-general-owner@postgresql.org] On Behalf Of William Yu
Sent: Friday, January 28, 2005 11:36 AM
To: pgsql-general@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Splitting queries across servers

Without memory, the prices are roughly:

4x846 = $5500
4x848 = $6500
4x850 = $8000

Memory costs would be:

16GB (1GB DIMMs) = $3000
32GB (2GB DIMMs) = $7500
64GB (4GB DIMMs) = $24000
128GB (8GB DIMMs) = $60000

The prices on the 4GB & 8GB DIMMs are bleeding edge of course. I see a
wide range of for them on Froogle. You will want your vendor of course
to pick memory is proper for the MB and pay whatever premium they'll
charge ontop of it. (Looking at the Tyan website, they only list 2GB
DIMMs as supported for their Quad Opteron MBs but whether that's because

those specs were done before >= 4GB DIMMs were available or an actual
hardware limitation, I dunno.)




Max wrote:
>>
>>With a Quad Opteron (4 memory slots per CPU), you could put 64GB of
RAM
>>onto a single machine using 4GB DIMMs in every slot.
>
>
> We were talking about a similar solution today, but not quite as good
as
> this. You really got me thinking now. 64Gb.. hm that would solve many
> issues. what do you think the cost would be for such a beast ? Any
idea ?
>
> Max
>
>
>
>
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