Thread: File Sytems Types and Os Recomendations
Hello
I am looking for information on what operating systems and filesystems people are running postgresql on. I have read so much on this I decided to get some input from other people. I at first was leaning toward FreeBSD and using its filesystem. We are a linux shop and love it. What are thoughts on using ext3 or some other Linux filesystems is there really that much performance difference by using ext3 v/s BSD/FS/UFS.
Thanks
John Allgood - ESC
Systems Administrator
2251 Old Cornelia Hwy
Gainesville, Ga. 30507
770.535.5049
On Tue, 16 Sep 2003, John Allgood wrote: > Hello > > I am looking for information on what operating systems and > filesystems people are running postgresql on. I have read so much on this I > decided to get some input from other people. I at first was leaning toward > FreeBSD and using its filesystem. We are a linux shop and love it. What are > thoughts on using ext3 or some other Linux filesystems is there really that > much performance difference by using ext3 v/s BSD/FS/UFS. Someone on the list recently compared them, and linux came out marginally faster than FreeBSD, but the difference was way less than what a faster I/O subsystem, faster / more memory, or faster / more CPUs would make. The differences between the different file systems wasn't all that great. Due to known data loss issues in early 2.4 kernels, my server was built with ext2 (it does sit on 3 UPSs and one diesel generator, so the chances of losing power are much lower than chances of losing a disk drive) a year and a half ago. Now that we're building replacement servers, we're gonna use ext3 on RH9 with the latest (from redhat) kernel. Build a big RAID5 or a medium size RAID1+0 with a good hw controller with battery backed memory for bet performance, or even linux software RAID to get the most out of your machine.
Try loading the data first and then create the indexes i recently loaded 50 Million rows in a table much bigger and it took about 1hour including the creation of indexes . Vasilis Ventirozos
john@turbocorp.com ("John Allgood") writes:
> I am looking for information on what operating systems and
> filesystems people are running postgresql on. I have read so much on
> this I decided to get some input from other people. I at first was
> leaning toward FreeBSD and using its filesystem. We are a linux shop
> and love it. What are thoughts on using ext3 or some other Linux
> filesystems is there really that much performance difference by
> using ext3 v/s BSD/FS/UFS.
I did some update-heavy benchmarking recently, comparing Linux FSes,
and found that of (ext3, XFS, JFS), the fastest one, by a moderate
margin, was JFS.
It was not unexpected that XFS and JFS were faster than ext3; what was
a bit surprising was that JFS was quite a bit faster than XFS. The
last I had heard, JFS was considered pretty slow as it hadn't been
tuned too much; apparently that has changed.
I didn't get around to testing FreeBSD with soft updates; the downside
to that was, in my environment, and may also be, for you, that there
was a lack of administrative familiarity. We have too many "heads
exploding" from absorbing other things right now to be able to afford
to throw in the learning curve of FreeBSD at this point in time.
--
let name="cbbrowne" and tld="acm.org" in name ^ "@" ^ tld;;
http://cbbrowne.com/info/nonrdbms.html
"The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose
from. Furthermore, if you do not like any of them, you can just wait
for next year's model." -- Tanenbaum, "Computer Networks"
scott.marlowe wrote: > On Tue, 16 Sep 2003, John Allgood wrote: > > > Hello > > > > I am looking for information on what operating systems and > > filesystems people are running postgresql on. I have read so much on this I > > decided to get some input from other people. I at first was leaning toward > > FreeBSD and using its filesystem. We are a linux shop and love it. What are > > thoughts on using ext3 or some other Linux filesystems is there really that > > much performance difference by using ext3 v/s BSD/FS/UFS. > > Someone on the list recently compared them, and linux came out marginally > faster than FreeBSD, but the difference was way less than what a faster > I/O subsystem, faster / more memory, or faster / more CPUs would make. That test was flawed because the user later reports that their IDE disks weren't using DMA on FreeBSD, while it was being used on Linux. He promised to report back. -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001 + If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073
Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes: > scott.marlowe wrote: > > > > Someone on the list recently compared them, and linux came out marginally > > faster than FreeBSD, but the difference was way less than what a faster > > I/O subsystem, faster / more memory, or faster / more CPUs would make. > > That test was flawed because the user later reports that their IDE disks > weren't using DMA on FreeBSD, while it was being used on Linux. He > promised to report back. The results on the website were updated on August 28 to fix this flaw and to incorporate some suggestions made on the pgsql-performance list (see http://www.potentialtech.com/wmoran/postgresql.php). I don't know why he didn't report back to the list. He expressed the desire that BSD benchmark faster than Linux, but the Linux numbers he reports are still about 8-10% better than the FreeBSD numbers. Both BSD and Linux are undergoing rapid development so this is pretty close to even.
On 24 Sep 2003, Doug Quale wrote: > Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes: > > > scott.marlowe wrote: > > > > > > Someone on the list recently compared them, and linux came out marginally > > > faster than FreeBSD, but the difference was way less than what a faster > > > I/O subsystem, faster / more memory, or faster / more CPUs would make. > > > > That test was flawed because the user later reports that their IDE disks > > weren't using DMA on FreeBSD, while it was being used on Linux. He > > promised to report back. > > The results on the website were updated on August 28 to fix this flaw > and to incorporate some suggestions made on the pgsql-performance list > (see http://www.potentialtech.com/wmoran/postgresql.php). > > I don't know why he didn't report back to the list. He expressed the > desire that BSD benchmark faster than Linux, but the Linux numbers he > reports are still about 8-10% better than the FreeBSD numbers. Both > BSD and Linux are undergoing rapid development so this is pretty close > to even. I thought he HAD reported back to this list that he'd changed the settings. Not sure now, been a while.