Thread: Is this good spec for a PostgreSQL server?
It's a Dell server with the following spec: PE2950 Quad-Core Xeon E5335 2.0GHz, dual 4GB 667MHz memory 3 x 73GB SAS 15000 rpm disk PERC 5/I Integrated controller card (8 ports, 256MB cache, battery backup) x 6 backplane Is this ok to run PostgreSQL 8.2.x and Tomcat on? And does anyone know if this PERC controller is supported under Linux (not heard of it before...) Regards, BTJ -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bjørn T Johansen btj@havleik.no ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Someone wrote: "I understand that if you play a Windows CD backwards you hear strange Satanic messages" To which someone replied: "It's even worse than that; play it forwards and it installs Windows" -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi, you have forgot to note some very important information - what load do you expect and what is the size of the database? Is this an upgrade (is the database already running somewhere - this would give you some performance requirements) or is it a completely new database? Hom nay users / transactions do you expect? Anyway the machine seems quite powerful to me - maybe I'd use more RAM but that's easy to do in the future and depends on the size of the dabase. The disks seem quite fast, just think about partitioning (raid scheme, where to put xlog, etc.) I guess we have PERC in some of our Dell servers, and it works fine - but I'm not sure about the exact type / version as I'm not responsible for the servers. Tomas > It's a Dell server with the following spec: > > PE2950 Quad-Core Xeon E5335 2.0GHz, dual > 4GB 667MHz memory > 3 x 73GB SAS 15000 rpm disk > PERC 5/I Integrated controller card (8 ports, 256MB cache, battery backup) x > 6 backplane > > > Is this ok to run PostgreSQL 8.2.x and Tomcat on? And does anyone know if > this PERC controller is supported under > Linux (not heard of it before...) > > > Regards, > > BTJ > > -- > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Bjørn T Johansen > > btj@havleik.no > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Someone wrote: > "I understand that if you play a Windows CD backwards you hear strange > Satanic messages" > To which someone replied: > "It's even worse than that; play it forwards and it installs Windows" > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- > TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate > subscribe-nomail command to majordomo@postgresql.org so that your > message can get through to the mailing list cleanly >
Bjørn T Johansen <btj@havleik.no> writes: > It's a Dell server with the following spec: > > PE2950 Quad-Core Xeon E5335 2.0GHz, dual > 4GB 667MHz memory > 3 x 73GB SAS 15000 rpm disk > PERC 5/I Integrated controller card (8 ports, 256MB cache, battery backup) x 6 backplane > > Is this ok to run PostgreSQL 8.2.x and Tomcat on? And does anyone know if this PERC controller is supported under > Linux (not heard of it before...) PERC is Dell's name from whatever RAID OEM flavour of the week they're buying. I think the PERC 5 is going to want the megaraid driver which is in the stock kernel tree but may or may not be compiled in your binary kernel distribution packages. -- Gregory Stark EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com
Well, it isn't really the largest database or the database that need the most performance... At the moment, the database isn't larger than 15MB and is growing slowly... It is a webapp that is using the database and at the most (at the moment) there is about 12-14 concurrent users and not much data volume... We are thinking about this spec. because the web app is a java app, and we need need something that can run java fast as well as postgresql... BTJ On Wed, 19 Sep 2007 14:11:01 +0200 tv@fuzzy.cz wrote: > Hi, you have forgot to note some very important information - what load do you > expect and what is the size of the database? Is this an upgrade (is the > database already running somewhere - this would give you some performance > requirements) or is it a completely new database? Hom nay users / transactions > do you expect? > > Anyway the machine seems quite powerful to me - maybe I'd use more RAM but > that's easy to do in the future and depends on the size of the dabase. The > disks seem quite fast, just think about partitioning (raid scheme, where to put > xlog, etc.) > > I guess we have PERC in some of our Dell servers, and it works fine - but I'm > not sure about the exact type / version as I'm not responsible for the servers. > > Tomas > > > It's a Dell server with the following spec: > > > > PE2950 Quad-Core Xeon E5335 2.0GHz, dual > > 4GB 667MHz memory > > 3 x 73GB SAS 15000 rpm disk > > PERC 5/I Integrated controller card (8 ports, 256MB cache, battery backup) x > > 6 backplane > > > > > > Is this ok to run PostgreSQL 8.2.x and Tomcat on? And does anyone know if > > this PERC controller is supported under > > Linux (not heard of it before...) > > > > > > Regards, > > > > BTJ > > > > -- > > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Bjørn T Johansen > > > > btj@havleik.no > > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Someone wrote: > > "I understand that if you play a Windows CD backwards you hear strange > > Satanic messages" > > To which someone replied: > > "It's even worse than that; play it forwards and it installs Windows" > > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- > > TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate > > subscribe-nomail command to majordomo@postgresql.org so that your > > message can get through to the mailing list cleanly > > > >
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 09/19/07 06:30, Bjørn T Johansen wrote: > It's a Dell server with the following spec: > > PE2950 Quad-Core Xeon E5335 2.0GHz, dual > 4GB 667MHz memory > 3 x 73GB SAS 15000 rpm disk > PERC 5/I Integrated controller card (8 ports, 256MB cache, battery > backup) x 6 backplane You *know* we're going to say something obvious like "it depends on the size of the database and the workload". > Is this ok to run PostgreSQL 8.2.x and Tomcat on? And does anyone > know if this PERC controller is supported under Linux (not heard > of it before...) Google says "yes". - -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good! -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFG8Rn3S9HxQb37XmcRAmEXAKDuh3tm+8am5Baopiwzinxh009xdgCdGgxS 5RhuTNIo88h227syqIIzfdA= =/YEE -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 09/19/07 07:33, Bjørn T Johansen wrote: > Well, it isn't really the largest database or the database that > need the most performance... At the moment, the database isn't > larger than 15MB and is growing slowly... It is a webapp that is That'll fit in shared memory. Very fast. Where will it be in a year? > using the database and at the most (at the moment) there is about > 12-14 concurrent users and not much data volume... How many users in a year? > We are thinking about this spec. because the web app is a java > app, and we need need something that can run java fast as well as > postgresql... 12-14 users on a Quad-core system with 4GB RAM? Am I so old that (even accepting Tomcat and Java) that seems "excessive"? - -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good! -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFG8R04S9HxQb37XmcRAhblAJ9AIS90c+xjOs4KOLqkYOg7gf2PwgCgleFw gZ82nICVs6tEKVY7IxGD1Fs= =xrCi -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Bjørn T Johansen wrote: > It's a Dell server with the following spec: > > PE2950 Quad-Core Xeon E5335 2.0GHz, dual > 4GB 667MHz memory > 3 x 73GB SAS 15000 rpm disk > PERC 5/I Integrated controller card (8 ports, 256MB cache, battery backup) x 6 backplane > > > Is this ok to run PostgreSQL 8.2.x and Tomcat on? And does anyone know if this PERC controller is supported under > Linux (not heard of it before...) I've been running Gentoo Linux on a PE2950 with PERC 5 controller, so yes Linux runs on it. (Not sure about the "I"... not sure in what flavor the PERC 5 exists.) Regards, Roppert > > > Regards, > > BTJ >
On Wed, 19 Sep 2007 07:59:36 -0500 Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@cox.net> wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > On 09/19/07 07:33, Bjørn T Johansen wrote: > > Well, it isn't really the largest database or the database that > > need the most performance... At the moment, the database isn't > > larger than 15MB and is growing slowly... It is a webapp that is > > That'll fit in shared memory. Very fast. > > Where will it be in a year? Well, twice as much I guess... > > > using the database and at the most (at the moment) there is about > > 12-14 concurrent users and not much data volume... > > How many users in a year? It's an internal webapp for a company, so I guess not that much more... > > > We are thinking about this spec. because the web app is a java > > app, and we need need something that can run java fast as well as > > postgresql... > > 12-14 users on a Quad-core system with 4GB RAM? > > Am I so old that (even accepting Tomcat and Java) that seems > "excessive"? Yes, I think that it's a bit excessive but the company can afford it so why not... :) BTJ
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 09/19/07 08:32, Bjørn T Johansen wrote: > On Wed, 19 Sep 2007 07:59:36 -0500 > Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@cox.net> wrote: > >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >> Hash: SHA1 >> >> On 09/19/07 07:33, Bjørn T Johansen wrote: >>> Well, it isn't really the largest database or the database that >>> need the most performance... At the moment, the database isn't >>> larger than 15MB and is growing slowly... It is a webapp that is >> That'll fit in shared memory. Very fast. >> >> Where will it be in a year? > > Well, twice as much I guess... > >>> using the database and at the most (at the moment) there is about >>> 12-14 concurrent users and not much data volume... >> How many users in a year? > > It's an internal webapp for a company, so I guess not that much more... > >>> We are thinking about this spec. because the web app is a java >>> app, and we need need something that can run java fast as well as >>> postgresql... >> 12-14 users on a Quad-core system with 4GB RAM? >> >> Am I so old that (even accepting Tomcat and Java) that seems >> "excessive"? > > Yes, I think that it's a bit excessive but the company can afford it so why not... :) Lucky SOB. I can't get my company to spring for a dual-core 2GB system with SATA drives. - -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good! -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFG8Sa4S9HxQb37XmcRAiOzAKDh3TGGuYLoJvK5bAJzGfouYDqVeQCgzcp4 lUjG26gFkQwccLuG9WuT+Do= =oFhQ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On 9/19/07, Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@cox.net> wrote: > On 09/19/07 08:32, Bjørn T Johansen wrote: > > On Wed, 19 Sep 2007 07:59:36 -0500 > >> > >> Am I so old that (even accepting Tomcat and Java) that seems > >> "excessive"? > > > > Yes, I think that it's a bit excessive but the company can afford it so why not... :) > > Lucky SOB. > > I can't get my company to spring for a dual-core 2GB system with > SATA drives. Hehe. I wanted a new reporting server so I wound up donating a 4 port SATA card for expanding an old workstation. Now I just need to stuff two more drives into it, bringing it up to a 6 drive sw RAID 10. Built it in a day. Meanwhile, the project to build a RAC cluster has been ongoing for about 2 months. But it's close! :)
On Sep 19, 2007, at 6:30 AM, Bjørn T Johansen wrote: > It's a Dell server with the following spec: > > PE2950 Quad-Core Xeon E5335 2.0GHz, dual > 4GB 667MHz memory > 3 x 73GB SAS 15000 rpm disk > PERC 5/I Integrated controller card (8 ports, 256MB cache, battery > backup) x 6 backplane RAID5 is not a recipe for performance on a database, if that's what you were thinking. Of course, without having any idea of database size or transaction rate, it's impossible to tell you if that's a good server for your needs or not. Maybe all you need is a 486. :) -- Decibel!, aka Jim C. Nasby, Database Architect decibel@decibel.org Give your computer some brain candy! www.distributed.net Team #1828
On Wed, 2007-09-19 at 15:32 +0200, Bjørn T Johansen wrote:
> > > Well, it isn't really the largest database or the database that
> > > need the most performance... At the moment, the database isn't
> > > larger than 15MB and is growing slowly... It is a webapp that is
> >
> > That'll fit in shared memory. Very fast.
> >
> > Where will it be in a year?
>
> Well, twice as much I guess...
>
> >
> > > using the database and at the most (at the moment) there is about
> > > 12-14 concurrent users and not much data volume...
> >
> > How many users in a year?
>
> It's an internal webapp for a company, so I guess not that much more...
I think, by far, your biggest concern is going to be reliability and
availability. It doesn't sound like you're really worried about
performance.
In that case, you might want to do RAID-1 or RAID-10 (requires at least
4 drives, of course).
Make sure you disable write caching on the individual drives, I think
it's actually enabled by default (weird setting for a RAID controller).
It's safe to enable writeback caching on the battery backed controller,
but I'd advise leaving it off. There's no reason to worry about the
battery if you don't need the performance anyway (however, it will help
your write latency, so you still might consider it).
Get dual power supplies to mitigate the chance of a power supply
failure, even if you don't have two independent circuits.
Oh, and if you're running linux make sure to use a safe setting for
these settings:
vm.oom-kill
vm.overcommit_ratio
vm.overcommit_memory
The default is not very safe for postgresql*. If a java process gets out
of control and eats memory, there's a good chance that it will kill
postgresql before it kills the out-of-control java process :(
Regards,
Jeff Davis
*: I consider this a linux bug: http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/2/9/275
Ok, thx for the advice.... :) BTJ On Wed, 19 Sep 2007 10:51:57 -0700 Jeff Davis <pgsql@j-davis.com> wrote: > On Wed, 2007-09-19 at 15:32 +0200, Bjørn T Johansen wrote: > > > > Well, it isn't really the largest database or the database that > > > > need the most performance... At the moment, the database isn't > > > > larger than 15MB and is growing slowly... It is a webapp that is > > > > > > That'll fit in shared memory. Very fast. > > > > > > Where will it be in a year? > > > > Well, twice as much I guess... > > > > > > > > > using the database and at the most (at the moment) there is about > > > > 12-14 concurrent users and not much data volume... > > > > > > How many users in a year? > > > > It's an internal webapp for a company, so I guess not that much more... > > I think, by far, your biggest concern is going to be reliability and > availability. It doesn't sound like you're really worried about > performance. > > In that case, you might want to do RAID-1 or RAID-10 (requires at least > 4 drives, of course). > > Make sure you disable write caching on the individual drives, I think > it's actually enabled by default (weird setting for a RAID controller). > > It's safe to enable writeback caching on the battery backed controller, > but I'd advise leaving it off. There's no reason to worry about the > battery if you don't need the performance anyway (however, it will help > your write latency, so you still might consider it). > > Get dual power supplies to mitigate the chance of a power supply > failure, even if you don't have two independent circuits. > > Oh, and if you're running linux make sure to use a safe setting for > these settings: > vm.oom-kill > vm.overcommit_ratio > vm.overcommit_memory > > The default is not very safe for postgresql*. If a java process gets out > of control and eats memory, there's a good chance that it will kill > postgresql before it kills the out-of-control java process :( > > Regards, > Jeff Davis > > *: I consider this a linux bug: http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/2/9/275 >
On Wed, 2007-09-19 at 08:40 -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: > > Yes, I think that it's a bit excessive but the company can afford it so why not... :) > > Lucky SOB. > > I can't get my company to spring for a dual-core 2GB system with > SATA drives. > hehe.. I'll end up running it on a low-end desktop w/ 1GB ram and a celeron 2G processor w/ ~30GB data/month.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 09/20/07 05:43, Ow Mun Heng wrote: > On Wed, 2007-09-19 at 08:40 -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: >>> Yes, I think that it's a bit excessive but the company can afford it so why not... :) >> Lucky SOB. >> >> I can't get my company to spring for a dual-core 2GB system with >> SATA drives. >> > > hehe.. I'll end up running it on a low-end desktop w/ 1GB ram and a > celeron 2G processor w/ ~30GB data/month. I probably would too, if I wasn't half-way across the country from the DC. - -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good! -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFG8m3FS9HxQb37XmcRAmrnAJ404YJyOqnJGDxviAjFWAlmMdyaawCcCM/a Gud2Ef//IuG3YBGSn8Gb/uU= =SO8R -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On Thu, 2007-09-20 at 07:55 -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: > On 09/20/07 05:43, Ow Mun Heng wrote: > > hehe.. I'll end up running it on a low-end desktop w/ 1GB ram and a > > celeron 2G processor w/ ~30GB data/month. > > I probably would too, if I wasn't half-way across the country from > the DC. Just curious, Why would being half-way across the country got to do with the server specs? Better specs - Less Issues? :-)
On Mon, 24 Sep 2007, Ow Mun Heng wrote: > Just curious, Why would being half-way across the country got to do with > the server specs? Better specs - Less Issues? :-) I think he was referring to the management boards that x86 servers, not low-end desktops, tend to provide, nowadays. Derek E. Lewis dlewis at solnetworks.net http://delewis.blogspot.com
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 09/23/07 22:40, Ow Mun Heng wrote: > On Thu, 2007-09-20 at 07:55 -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: >> On 09/20/07 05:43, Ow Mun Heng wrote: > >>> hehe.. I'll end up running it on a low-end desktop w/ 1GB ram and a >>> celeron 2G processor w/ ~30GB data/month. >> I probably would too, if I wasn't half-way across the country from >> the DC. > > Just curious, Why would being half-way across the country got to do with > the server specs? Better specs - Less Issues? :-) If I was plugged into the company's LAN, I also could use my low-end desktop as a database server... - -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good! -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFG90sGS9HxQb37XmcRAp2vAKDE3AMdELX0JDCVfPU5fndHwE9GzwCfeLIL WTLQo+YUM43aOTYNOW6Gmm0= =lWWq -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On Wednesday 19 September 2007, Bjørn T Johansen wrote: > It's a Dell server with the following spec: > > PE2950 Quad-Core Xeon E5335 2.0GHz, dual > 4GB 667MHz memory > 3 x 73GB SAS 15000 rpm disk > PERC 5/I Integrated controller card (8 ports, 256MB cache, battery backup) x 6 backplane Asking "is this a good database server?" is a meaningless question without more information. I have an ancient 500 Mhz Pentium III that runs a lightweight Postgres database excellently, but I wouldn't recommend it for enterprise duty! I've admin'd a few Dell servers, and consistently ran into minor driver niggles. They often pick hardware that isn't supported in the source kernel tree, though to their credit, they DO usually provide appropriate drivers. In one case, it was an ethernet driver that was unsupported by my distro. (RedHat/CentOS) There were sources available that I could recompile, and I did, and it worked fine, but it was sure a pain in the #@$! to have to recompile it everytime a new kernel came out, and there was no way to test whether or not the recompile "took" until the reboot - and the reboot is the WORST way to test an ethernet driver when you are admining remotely. Personally, I prefer generic, white-box solutions, like a Tyan reference system, or maybe a SuperMicro. They tend to be conservative in their hardware choices, they're quite reliable, very solid performers, and for the price of one "on brand" server, you can get two whitebox systems and have a hot failover on site. I have 4x quad-core Opteron 1U rackmounts that I've been blissfully happy with, 2x 300 GB 10k SCSI (software RAID 1), 4 GB of RAM, dual Gb NICs. I can pull any one of the RAID 1 drives out any machine, plug it into any other machine, and have a working, booted system in < 5 minutes. No driver headaches, no hassle, with excellent reliability under load. (knocks on wood) Each person picks their favorite blend of poison, I guess. -Ben -- I kept looking for somebody to solve the problem. Then I realized - I am somebody. -- Author Unknown -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.
I have a very old postgres server that I am trying to move the data off of. It is running 7.1 and has been trouble free for 6 plus years. I am trying to move the data base off to a server running 8.1. I have managed to back up the data using PG_Dump using like this. " pg_dump -b -Fc -h stan.someplace.com -u phone >phone.data" But I have had no luck getting PG_Restore to restore the data. Any suggestions on what the command line should look like? Is it a problem going from 7.1 to 8.1? If so how do I get around it? The data does use some large objects for text files if that is any help. We set this up as a test system and it ran so well no one wanted to take it down. I really want to migrate it before the PII 266 it is running on gives up the ghost :)
On Sep 25, 2007, at 9:00 , David Siebert wrote: > I have a very old postgres server that I am trying to move the data > off > of. It is running 7.1 and has been trouble free for 6 plus years. > I am trying to move the data base off to a server running 8.1. In my opinion you should look at 8.2, not 8.1. And 8.3 is on the horizon :) > I have managed to back up the data using PG_Dump using like this. > " pg_dump -b -Fc -h stan.someplace.com -u phone >phone.data" Be sure to use the 8.2 pg_dump, not the 7.1 pg_dump, against the 7.1 database. > But I have had no luck getting PG_Restore to restore the data. It would be helpful if you provided the exact pg_restore command you're using (again, it should be the 8.2 version of pg_restore) and the exact error you're getting. Otherwise it's difficult for us to know what's going on. > Any suggestions on what the command line should look like? You might need to use adddepend, which is a contrib module included in 8.1 (not 8.2 AIUI). (Perhaps 8.2 includes this functionality in core? You can probably check the release notes for 8.2 for details.) > I really want to migrate it before the PII 266 it is running on > gives up the ghost :) Not only the hardware :) 7.1 includes known data-eating bugs. Michael Glaesemann grzm seespotcode net
Michael Glaesemann wrote: > > On Sep 25, 2007, at 9:00 , David Siebert wrote: >> Any suggestions on what the command line should look like? > > You might need to use adddepend, which is a contrib module included in 8.1 > (not 8.2 AIUI). (Perhaps 8.2 includes this functionality in core? You can > probably check the release notes for 8.2 for details.) Not in core -- the code was pushed to pgfoundry. -- Alvaro Herrera http://www.CommandPrompt.com/ PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support
On Sep 25, 2007, at 10:37 , Alvaro Herrera wrote: > Michael Glaesemann wrote: >> >> You might need to use adddepend, which is a contrib module >> included in 8.1 >> (not 8.2 AIUI). (Perhaps 8.2 includes this functionality in core? >> You can >> probably check the release notes for 8.2 for details.) > > Not in core -- the code was pushed to pgfoundry. Ah, that's right. Thanks, Alvaro. Here's a link: http://pgfoundry.org/projects/adddepends/ Michael Glaesemann grzm seespotcode net