Ok thanks. I think I will go with 64 bit everything on the box. If I can get the Sun Fire V20Z then I will stick with Solaris 10 x86 and download the 64 bit PostgreSQL 8.1 binaries from blastwave.org. I develop the PHP code to my DSS system on my Windows XP laptop. Normally, I test the code on this laptop but let it hit the live database when I want to run some tests. Well just this afternoon I installed PostgreSQL 8.1.1 on my windows laptop and rebuilt the the entire live database instance on there from a pg_dump archive. I am blown away by the performance increase in PostgreSQL 8.1.x. Has anyone else had a chance to test it? All the queries I run against it are remarkably fast but more importantly I can see that the two cores of my Hyper Threaded P4 are being used. One of the questions I posted on this list was whether PostgreSQL could make use of the large number of cores available on the Ultrasparc T1000/T2000 cores. I am beginning to think that with PostgreSQL 8.1.x the buffer manager could indeed use all those cores. This could make running a DSS or OLTP on an Ultrasparc T1000/T2000 with PostgreSQL a much better bargain than on an intel system. Any thoughts? Thanks, Juan On Thursday 22 December 2005 22:12, David Lang wrote: > On Wed, 21 Dec 2005, Juan Casero wrote: > > Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 22:31:54 -0500 > > From: Juan Casero <caseroj@xxxxxxxxxxx> > > To: pgsql-performance@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx > > Subject: Re: [PERFORM] What's the best hardver for PostgreSQL 8.1? > > > > Sorry folks. I had a couple of glasses of wine as I wrote this. Anyway > > I originally wanted the box to have more than two drives so I could do > > RAID 5 but that is going to cost too much. Also, contrary to my > > statement below it seems to me I should run the 32 bit postgresql server > > on the 64 bit kernel. Would you agree this will probably yield the best > > performance? > > you definantly need a 64 bit kernel to address as much ram as you will > need. > > the question of 32 bit vs 64 bit postgres needs to be benchmarked, but my > inclination is that you probably do want 64 bit for that as well. > > 64 bit binaries are slightly larger then 32 bit ones (less so on x86/AMD64 > then on any other mixed platform though), but the 64 bit version also has > access to twice as many registers as a 32 bit one, and the Opteron chips > have some other features that become availabel in 64 bit mode (or more > useful) > > like everything else this needs benchmarks to prove with your workload > (I'm trying to get some started, but haven't had a chance yet) > > David Lang > > > I know it > > depends alot on the system but for now this database is about 20 > > gigabytes. Not too large right now but it may grow 5x in the next year. > > > > Thanks, > > Juan > > > > On Wednesday 21 December 2005 22:09, Juan Casero wrote: > >> I just sent my boss an email asking him for a Sun v20z with dual 2.2 Ghz > >> opterons, 2 Gigs of RAM and RAID 1. I would have liked a better server > >> capable of RAID but that seems to be out of his budget right now. Ok so > >> I assume I get this Sun box. Most likely I will go with Linux since it > >> is a fair bet he doesn't want to pay for the Solaris 10 x86 license. > >> Although I kind of like the idea of using Solaris 10 x86 for this. I > >> will assume I need to install the x64 kernel that comes with say Fedora > >> Core 4. Should I run the Postgresql 8.x binaries in 32 bit mode or 64 > >> bit mode? My instinct tells me 64 bit mode is most efficient for our > >> database size about 20 gigs right now but may grow to 100 gigs in a year > >> or so. I just finished loading a 20 gig database on a dual 900 Mhz > >> Ultrasparc III system with 2 gigs of ram and about 768 megs of shared > >> memory available for the posgresql server running Solaris 10. The load > >> has smoked a P4 3.2 Ghz system I am using also with 2 gigs of ram > >> running postgresql 8.0.3. I mean I started the sparc load after the P4 > >> load. The sparc load has finished already rebuilding the database from > >> a pg_dump file but the P4 system is still going. The p4 has 1.3 Gigs of > >> shared memory allocated to postgresql. How about them apples? > >> > >> > >> Thanks, > >> Juan > >> > >> On Wednesday 21 December 2005 18:57, William Yu wrote: > >>> Juan Casero wrote: > >>>> Can you elaborate on the reasons the opteron is better than the Xeon > >>>> when it comes to disk io? I have a PostgreSQL 7.4.8 box running a > >>>> DSS. One of our > >>> > >>> Opterons have 64-bit IOMMU -- Xeons don't. That means in 64-bit mode, > >>> transfers to > 4GB, the OS must allocated the memory < 4GB, DMA to that > >>> block and then the CPU must do extra work in copying the memory to > > >>> 4GB. Versus on the Opteron, it's done by the IO adaptor using DMA in > >>> the background. > >>> > >>> ---------------------------(end of > >>> broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 6: explain analyze is your > >>> friend > >> > >> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- > >> TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate > >> subscribe-nomail command to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx so that your > >> message can get through to the mailing list cleanly > > > > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- > > TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster > > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- > TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
