Thread: Hardware suggestions for a new data warehouse Postgresql/Bizgres server? (£6000)

Hi All,

I've been lurking at both the bizgres and postgres mailing lists in recent
months to get some ideas for building a new db server. I saw some threads on
the 7k$ server and it sounds like the Opteron, lots of ram and raid10 is the
way to go. (my budget is +/- �6000 (=$10000))

But I'm keen to get some specific input on the more data warehouse type of
db requirements. The db will hold some 1000 tables (multiple schemas, 1 db)
with some of the larger tables going over 50m rows (and expect them to grow
another 10m/year). This is mainly all financial/statistical data. I only
have a small number of people working against the db (10 people plus maybe
another 20 applications running batch jobs) but they crunch through lots of
data (the bigger tables or views unioning big datasets). I'm also keen to
make use of PL/R inside Postgresql, so I presume this might put extra
requirements on the CPU side of things.

I would be very keen to hear what you would suggest for this setup or what
experiences you have to share.

Btw, I would buy to hardware for the UK, so any good retailers you know of,
let me know.


Many thanks,

Filip

On Jul 26, 2005, at 7:35 AM, Filip Wuytack wrote:

> I've been lurking at both the bizgres and postgres mailing lists in
> recent
> months to get some ideas for building a new db server. I saw some
> threads on
> the 7k$ server and it sounds like the Opteron, lots of ram and
> raid10 is the
> way to go. (my budget is +/- £6000 (=$10000))
>

General advice: don't skimp on RAM or on your disk subsystem.  Buy a
high performance RAID solution like an LSI 320-2x card and put the
mirrored paris on the separate channels (ie, disk 0 and 1 are
mirrored, so disk 0 is on channel a and disk 1 is on channel b).
Spend the money on the U320 disks, too.  Get them as big as you can
if you're planning to warehouse data.

The opteron is ideal because it has incredible I/O bandwidth to the RAM.

Be sure to deal with a vendor who knows and supports the OS you
choose (and it had better not be windows...)

Vivek Khera, Ph.D.
+1-301-869-4449 x806