Thread: Re: Spend 7K *WHERE*? WAS Intel SRCS16 SATA raid? and How
I think there are many people who feel that $7,000 is a good budget for a database server, me being one. * I agree with the threads that more disks are better. * I also agree that SCSI is better, but can be hard to justify if your budget is tight, and I have great certainty that 2x SATA drives on a good controller is better than x SCSI drives for many work loads. * I also feel that good database design and proper maintenance can be one of the single biggest performance enhancers available. This can be labor intensive, however, and sometimes throwing more hardware at a problem is cheaper than restructuring a db. Either way, having a good hardware platform is an excellent place to start, as much of your tuning will depend on certain aspects of your hardware. So if you need a db server, and you have $7k to spend, I'd say spend it. From this list, I've gathered that I/O and RAM are your two most important investments. Once you get that figured out, you can still do some performance tuning on your new server using the excellent advice from this mailing list. By the way, for all those who make this list work, I've rarely found such a thorough, helpful and considerate group of people as these on the performance list. -- Matthew Nuzum <matt@followers.net> www.followers.net - Makers of "Elite Content Management System" View samples of Elite CMS in action by visiting http://www.followers.net/portfolio/
On Fri, 2005-04-15 at 15:43 -0500, Matthew Nuzum wrote: > I think there are many people who feel that $7,000 is a good budget for a > database server, me being one. The budget for a database server is usually some %age of the value of the data within the database or the value of it's availability. Big budget hardware (well, going from $7k to $100k) often brings more redundancy and reliability improvement than performance improvement. If you're going to lose $100k in business because the database was unavailable for 12 hours, then kick $75k into the hardware and call a profit of $25k over 3 years (hardware lifetime is 3 years, catastrophic failure happens once every 3 or so years...). Ditto for backup systems. If the company depends on the data in the database for it's survival, where bankruptcy or worse would happen as a result of complete dataloss, then it would be a good idea to invest a significant amount of the companies revenue into making damn sure that doesn't happen. Call it an insurance policy. Performance for me dictates which hardware is purchased and configuration is used within $BUDGET, but $BUDGET itself is nearly always defined by the value of the data stored. > * I agree with the threads that more disks are better. > * I also agree that SCSI is better, but can be hard to justify if your > budget is tight, and I have great certainty that 2x SATA drives on a good > controller is better than x SCSI drives for many work loads. > * I also feel that good database design and proper maintenance can be one > of the single biggest performance enhancers available. This can be labor > intensive, however, and sometimes throwing more hardware at a problem is > cheaper than restructuring a db. > > Either way, having a good hardware platform is an excellent place to start, > as much of your tuning will depend on certain aspects of your hardware. > > So if you need a db server, and you have $7k to spend, I'd say spend it. > >From this list, I've gathered that I/O and RAM are your two most important > investments. > > Once you get that figured out, you can still do some performance tuning on > your new server using the excellent advice from this mailing list. > > By the way, for all those who make this list work, I've rarely found such a > thorough, helpful and considerate group of people as these on the > performance list. > --
Rod Taylor wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-04-15 at 15:43 -0500, Matthew Nuzum wrote:
>> * I agree with the threads that more disks are better.
>> * I also agree that SCSI is better, but can be hard to justify
Here's another approach to spend $7000 that we're currently
trying.... but it'll only work for certain systems if you can
use load balancing and/or application level partitioning
of your software.
For $859 you can buy
a Dell SC1425 with (*see footnote)
2 Xeon 2.8GHz processors (*see footnote)
1 GB ram
1 80GB hard drive. (*see footnote)
Doing the math, it seems I could get 8 of
these systems for that $6870, giving me:
16 Xeon processors (*see footnote),
640 GB of disk space spread over 8 spindles
8 GB of ram
16 1Gbps network adapters.
Despite the non-optimal hardware (* see footnote), the price
of each system and extra redundancy may make up the difference
for some applications.
For example, I didn't see many other $7000 proposals have
have nearly 10GB of ram, or over a dozen CPUs (even counting
the raid controllers), or over a half a terrabyte of storage ,
or capable of 5-10 Gbit/sec of network traffic... The extra
capacity would allow me to have redundancy that would somewhat
make up for the flakier hardware, no raid, etc.
Thoughts? Over the next couple months I'll be evaluating
a cluster of 4 systems almost exactly as I described (but
with cheaper dual hard drives in each system), for a GIS
system that does lend itself well to application-level
partitioning.
Ron
(* footnotes)
Yeah, I know some reports here say that dual Xeons can suck;
but Dell's throwing in the second one for free.
Yeah, I know some reports here say Dells can suck, but it
was easy to get a price quote online, and they're a nice
business partner of ours.
Yeah, I should get 2 hard drives in each system, but Dell
wanting an additional $160 for a 80GB hard drive is not a good deal.
Yeah, I know I'd be better off with 2GB ram, but Dell
wants $400 (half the price of an entire additional
system) for the upgrade from 1GB to 2.
I also realize that application level partitioning needed
to take advantage of a loose cluster like this is not practical
for many applications.
On Apr 15, 2005, at 8:10 PM, Ron Mayer wrote: > For example, I didn't see many other $7000 proposals have > have nearly 10GB of ram, or over a dozen CPUs (even counting > the raid controllers), or over a half a terrabyte of storage , > or capable of 5-10 Gbit/sec of network traffic... The extra And how much are you spending on the switch that will carry 10Gb/sec traffic? > capacity would allow me to have redundancy that would somewhat > make up for the flakier hardware, no raid, etc. it would work for some class of applications which are pretty much read-only. and don't forget to factor in the overhead of the replication... > > Thoughts? Over the next couple months I'll be evaluating > a cluster of 4 systems almost exactly as I described (but > with cheaper dual hard drives in each system), for a GIS > system that does lend itself well to application-level > partitioning. I'd go with fewer bigger boxes with RAID so i can sleep better at night :-) Vivek Khera, Ph.D. +1-301-869-4449 x806