Thread: Re: [SQL] 2 million+ entries

Re: [SQL] 2 million+ entries

From
"G. Anthony Reina"
Date:
Michael Richards wrote:

> We're currently testing a system with about 1.2 million records with 6.5
> and it outperforms SQL server 6 by quite a lot. It's running on a dual P3
> with a 4 9.1 gig Cheetah array on a DPT controller running RAID0. I'm
> pretty happy with it...
>
>

Great balls of fire! A dual P3 with a four 9.1 Gig RAID0 Cheetah array?
That's fantastic! How much did that set you back? Are there any special
quirks about using Postgres on a multiple processor, multiple disk
system?

-Tony




Re: [SQL] 2 million+ entries

From
Bruce Momjian
Date:
> Michael Richards wrote:
> 
> > We're currently testing a system with about 1.2 million records with 6.5
> > and it outperforms SQL server 6 by quite a lot. It's running on a dual P3
> > with a 4 9.1 gig Cheetah array on a DPT controller running RAID0. I'm
> > pretty happy with it...
> >
> >
> 
> Great balls of fire! A dual P3 with a four 9.1 Gig RAID0 Cheetah array?
> That's fantastic! How much did that set you back? Are there any special
> quirks about using Postgres on a multiple processor, multiple disk
> system?

No quirks.  Our multi-Unix-process model for each backend makes
multi-cpu's work great.  In fact, multi-threading, which mysql uses to
put multiple backends in a single unix process, can be a pain to get
working on a multi-cpu system unless the OS can handle threads across
multiple cpu processes.

--  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://www.op.net/~candle maillist@candle.pha.pa.us            |  (610)
853-3000+  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill,
Pennsylvania19026
 


Re: [SQL] 2 million+ entries

From
Michael Richards
Date:
On Wed, 25 Aug 1999, G. Anthony Reina wrote:

> > We're currently testing a system with about 1.2 million records with 6.5
> > and it outperforms SQL server 6 by quite a lot. It's running on a dual P3
> > with a 4 9.1 gig Cheetah array on a DPT controller running RAID0. I'm
> > pretty happy with it...
> 
> Great balls of fire! A dual P3 with a four 9.1 Gig RAID0 Cheetah array?
> That's fantastic! How much did that set you back? Are there any special
> quirks about using Postgres on a multiple processor, multiple disk
> system?
As I recall it was about $8k CAD. The system purrs. I'm especially happy
with the DPT controller. This would be a truly worthy machine for a large
news feed.

-Michael



Re: [SQL] 2 million+ entries

From
Michael Richards
Date:
On Wed, 25 Aug 1999, G. Anthony Reina wrote:

> That's fantastic! How much did that set you back? Are there any special
> quirks about using Postgres on a multiple processor, multiple disk
> system?

Oops. To answer your second question. No. None whatsoever. The multi-disk
array is handled by the RAID controller. To the OS it appears to be a
gigantic disk. The RAID controller also has hardware cache so it can do
nifty things like queue a large number of simultaneous requests and
elevator sort them for seek efficiency. The machine also has a large
amount of RAM.

If you really need high performance, I've done nifty things like putting
indexes on different disks. Postgres does not seem to have a problem with
tables which have been physically moved and replace with symbolic links. I
don't know how well it would handle DROP queries, but I'm not in the habit
of dropping 10Gb tables very often.

-Michael