Thread: Hardware opinions wanted

I wanted to solicit some opinions on architecture and performance from
you guys.

I am torn right now between these two systems to replace my aging DB server:

4 x 2.2 GHz Opteron
8GB RAM
Ultra320 15kRPM RAID5 with 128MB cache

and

2-way 1.2GHz POWER4+ IBM pSeries 615
8GB RAM
Ultra320 15kRPM RAID5 with 64MB cache

I plan on serving ~80GB of pgsql database on this machine.  The current
machine handles around 1.5 million queries per day.

I am having some trouble finding direct comparisons between the two
architectures.  The OS will most likely be Linux ( I'm hedging on AIX
for now ).  The pSeries has 8MB cache per CPU card ( 2 CPU on a card )
while the Opteron has 1MB for each processor.  I know the POWER4+ is a
very fast machine but I wonder if having more processors in the Opteron
system would beat it for database serving? FWIW, they are very close in
price.

Ignoring the fault-tolerance features of the pSeries, which one would
you pick for performance?

Thanks,
Dan

Dan Harris wrote:
> I am torn right now between these two systems to replace my aging DB
> server:
>
> 4 x 2.2 GHz Opteron
> 8GB RAM
> Ultra320 15kRPM RAID5 with 128MB cache
>
> and
>
> 2-way 1.2GHz POWER4+ IBM pSeries 615
> 8GB RAM
> Ultra320 15kRPM RAID5 with 64MB cache

I don't know anything about the pSeries, but have a look in the
archives, there was recently a rather long thread about Xeon vs.
Opteron. The Opteron was the clear winner.

Personally I think that you can't be wrong with the 4-way Opteron. It
scales very well and if you don't need the fault tolerance of the
pSeries platform, then you should be able to save one or two bucks with
opteron way.

Btw: If you want to save a few more bucks, then drop the 15k and take
10k drives. They are of almost same speed.

Regards,
Bjoern

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I'm working through the aquisition process for a quad Opteron box right
now. I'll be benchmarking it against a quad processor p630 as well as a
quad Xeon after we get it and posting results here. But that's about a
month or two from now.

I expect that the results will be strongly in favour of the Opetron,
especially the price / performance since the Opteron box is being quoted
at about half the price of the p630 systems.

One thing you may wish to consider is going with lots of 10kRPM SATA
disks instead of 15kRPM SCSI disks. Two companies that I'm aware of
offer quad Opteron solutions with SATA raid:

http://www.quatopteron.com/
http://alltec.com/home.php

Andrew Hammond
DBA - Afilias
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