Re: Need help with 8.4 Performance Testing - Mailing list pgsql-performance

On Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 12:47 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 2008-12-13 at 12:45 -0700, Scott Marlowe wrote:
>> On Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 11:37 AM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:
>> > On Sat, 2008-12-13 at 07:44 -0800, david@lang.hm wrote:
>> >> On Sat, 13 Dec 2008, Robert Haas wrote:
>
>> >
http://h71016.www7.hp.com/ctoBases.asp?oi=E9CED&BEID=19701&SBLID=&ProductLineId=450&FamilyId=2570&LowBaseId=15222&LowPrice=$1,899.00&familyviewgroup=757&viewtype=Matrix
>> >
>> > Retail cost, 15k, 36GB drives, ~ 12k. A phone call and threat of buying
>> > dell gets its for ~ 10k.
>>
>> I prefer to deal with companies that I don't have to horse trade with
>> to get a good deal.  You can threaten dell and get good deals, but if
>
> And what company would that be? There is zero major server manufacturer
> that doesn't do the, "Oh you have a competitive bid... let's just lower
> that quote for you"
>
> Note: HP can beat Dell, every time on an apples to apples quote. At
> least when I have done it.

Aberdeen inc, the one I listed in my previous response.  Their on site
price for a single quad core xeon, 8 gig 800MHZ ram and 24 15k5 SAS
drives is $10,080 or so.  I've never had to tell them I was getting a
better price anywhere else.  They just give me a great quote each
time, they have very fast and efficient customer service, and they
give a 5 year warranty on everything they custom build for you.  I'm a
very satisfied customer.

BTW, they seem to have saved a fair bit of money and passed the
savings along to you and me, by designing their website in one whole
afternoon.  :)  Yeah, it's ugly, but it works well enough to get an
idea what you want and then ask for a quote.

We got our 8 core opteron 32 Gig ram areca 1680i and 16 15k4 Seagates
for $11,000 or so at the end of summer.  When we first plugged them
in, one machine started hanging after 24-48 hours of steady load
testing.  CAlled them, they said it sounded like a RAID card and
they'd ship me a new one next day business.  Let me make it clear, I
didn't tell them I thought it was the RAID card, or that I needed it
the next day, they decided that's what it sounded like, and they
shipped it to me, FOC.  Arrived the next business day.  Which was a
monday.  Between friday and monday I swapped the RAID controllers
between the two machines, and after 36 hours of testing, the problem
followed the RAID controller and the other machine locked up.  Got the
new controller, put it in and ran a week long test, no failures.  We
have since had one drive fail (each machine has two hot spares) and
they cross shipped the replacement and we got it in 3 days.

Few places have made me so happy with a decision to spend $22k on
servers as these guys have.