Thread: 10GbE / iSCSI storage for postgresql.

10GbE / iSCSI storage for postgresql.

From
Rajesh Kumar Mallah
Date:
Hi ,

Can PostgreSQL run fast ( within 80% of DAS) with iSCSI sotrage
connected via 10GbE ?

regds
mallah.

Re: 10GbE / iSCSI storage for postgresql.

From
Craig Ringer
Date:
On 09/22/2011 03:49 AM, Rajesh Kumar Mallah wrote:
> Hi ,
>
> Can PostgreSQL run fast ( within 80% of DAS) with iSCSI sotrage
> connected via 10GbE ?

"Maybe".

What's that 80% of? Sequential read throughput? Random IOPS? Individual
read latency?

What's the expected workload? Read-heavy, write-heavy, or middle-ground?
Data warehouse/OLAP or OLTP? Lots of small simple transactions, or fewer
big complex transactions?

Does the system on the other end of the iSCSI link have battery-backed
write caching, flash-logged write cache, or some other way to guarantee
writes are persistent without having to wait for data to flush out to
spinning disks?  You'll need something like this for decent write
performance especially if you're doing lots of small transactions. If
the SAN doesn't have a safe way to cache writes you can partly work
around the issue by doing fewer bigger transactions and/or by using a
commit_delay.

What kind of read cache does the SAN have? How much contention with
other users will there be? How big is its write-back cache (if it has
one)? Does it have any kind of QoS to prevent something like someone
disk-imaging a server from starving your Pg instance of read bandwidth?

--
Craig Ringer

Re: 10GbE / iSCSI storage for postgresql.

From
Rajesh Kumar Mallah
Date:
Dear Craig ,

The other end of the iSCSI shall have all the goodies like the raid controller
with a WBC with BBU. There can even be multiple raid cards for multiple
servers and disksets. I am even planning for NICs having TOE features .

 The doubt is will it work withing a acceptable performance range as
compared to the situation
of DAS (Direct Attached Storage). Has anyone tried like this before ?

regds
mallah.

On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 9:44 AM, Craig Ringer <ringerc@ringerc.id.au> wrote:
> On 09/22/2011 03:49 AM, Rajesh Kumar Mallah wrote:
>>
>> Hi ,
>>
>> Can PostgreSQL run fast ( within 80% of DAS) with iSCSI sotrage
>> connected via 10GbE ?
>
> "Maybe".
>
> What's that 80% of? Sequential read throughput? Random IOPS? Individual read
> latency?
>
> What's the expected workload? Read-heavy, write-heavy, or middle-ground?
> Data warehouse/OLAP or OLTP? Lots of small simple transactions, or fewer big
> complex transactions?
>
> Does the system on the other end of the iSCSI link have battery-backed write
> caching, flash-logged write cache, or some other way to guarantee writes are
> persistent without having to wait for data to flush out to spinning disks?
>  You'll need something like this for decent write performance especially if
> you're doing lots of small transactions. If the SAN doesn't have a safe way
> to cache writes you can partly work around the issue by doing fewer bigger
> transactions and/or by using a commit_delay.
>
> What kind of read cache does the SAN have? How much contention with other
> users will there be? How big is its write-back cache (if it has one)? Does
> it have any kind of QoS to prevent something like someone disk-imaging a
> server from starving your Pg instance of read bandwidth?
>
> --
> Craig Ringer
>

Re: 10GbE / iSCSI storage for postgresql.

From
Craig Ringer
Date:
On 22/09/2011 5:47 PM, Rajesh Kumar Mallah wrote:
> Dear Craig ,
>
> The other end of the iSCSI shall have all the goodies like the raid controller
> with a WBC with BBU. There can even be multiple raid cards for multiple
> servers and disksets. I am even planning for NICs having TOE features .
>
>   The doubt is will it work withing a acceptable performance range as
> compared to the situation of DAS (Direct Attached Storage). Has anyone tried like this before ?

Sure, people use iSCSI and similar relatively frequently, and as I said
it depends a lot on the controller (client- and server-side), the
workload, and the details of the implementation.

If the iSCSI storage is fast, PostgreSQL will be fast. If the iSCSI
storage has slow writes, PostgreSQL will have slow writes. And so on.

--
Craig Ringer