Re: Dream Server? - Mailing list pgsql-general

here's a link for a sql server performance tuning guide...

http://www.sql-server-performance.com/hardware_tuning.asp

some of the nuggets from it is:
   "When selecting your CPU for your server, select one
   with a large L2 cache. This is especially important if
   you have multiple-processor servers. Select at least a
   1MB L2 cache if you have one or two CPUs. If you have
   4 or more CPUs, get at a least 2MB L2 cache in each
   CPU. The greater the size of the L2 cache, the greater
   the server's CPU performance because it reduces the
   amount of wait time experienced by the CPU when reading
   and writing data to main memory."

   "From a performance perspective, it is better to have
   more smaller SCSI disk drives in an array than having
   fewer larger SCSI disk drives. Let's say that you need
   about 100GB of hard disk space in a RAID 5 array. There
   are several ways you can configure such an array, some
   of which offer more performance than others. Some
   configurations include:

   13 - 9GB Drives

   7 - 18GB Drives

   4 - 36GB Drives

   Each of the above configurations will provide about the
   same amount of storage space, but the more drives there
   are in the array, the faster the I/O will be (assuming
   that the controllers can handle all of the I/O traffic).
   This is because more drives offer more read/write heads
   that all can be working simultaneously, which speeds
   disk reads and writes."

   *****

   "Select the best I/O controller you can get. Top-notch
   controllers offload much of the I/O work onto its own
   local CPU, freeing up CPU time on the server to do other
   tasks. For the ultimate in I/O controllers, consider a
   fiber channel connection instead of a SCSI connection."

rjsjr

> -----Original Message-----
> From: pgsql-general-owner@postgresql.org
> [mailto:pgsql-general-owner@postgresql.org]On Behalf Of Gavin M. Roy
> Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2002 3:52 PM
> To: pgsql-general@postgresql.org
> Subject: [GENERAL] Dream Server?
>
>
>
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> I'm currently running a 4 Gig 11 million row database and am looking
> to build a "dream server" for it.   I am currently running a dual p3
> 1GHz system with 10k rpm scsi drives and 4 gigs of ram (which I have
> configured pgsql to use all of) and I'm concerned about performance
> once the db doubles in size, which should be in 6 mos to a year at
> the latest.  First off, If money was no concern, what would you buy
> as the ultimate postgresql server running linux?  Second off, on a
> more technical note, does pgsql take advantage of multiple
> processors.  If I had a 8 way 800 MHz Xeon would the machine blow
> away a 2GHz P4?  How much is CPU a factor compared to memory?  Disk
> speed?  I want to be able to do large volume selects on tables with
> more than 5 million rows and not have the server blink at other
> requests put in at the same time.
>
> Any hints or suggestions/experience here would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Gavin
>
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