After takin a swig o' Arrakan spice grog, jd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ("Joshua D. Drake") belched out: > Jeremy Haile wrote: >> We are a small company looking to put together the most cost effective >> solution for our production database environment. Currently in >> production Postgres 8.1 is running on this machine: >> >> Dell 2850 >> 2 x 3.0 Ghz Xeon 800Mhz FSB 2MB Cache >> 4 GB DDR2 400 Mhz >> 2 x 73 GB 10K SCSI RAID 1 (for xlog and OS) >> 4 x 146 GB 10K SCSI RAID 10 (for postgres data) >> Perc4ei controller >> >> The above is a standard Dell box with nothing added or modified beyond >> the options available directly through Dell. > You should probably review the archives for PostgreSQL user > experience with Dell's before you purchase one. Hear, hear! We found Dell servers were big-time underperformers. Generic hardware put together with generally the same brand names of components (e.g. - for SCSI controllers and such) would generally play much better. For the cheapo desktop boxes they obviously have to buy the "cheapest hardware available this week;" it sure seems as though they engage in the same sort of thing with the "server class" hardware. I don't think anyone has been able to forcibly point out any completely precise shortcoming; just that they underperform what the specs suggest they ought to be able to provide. >> I sent our scenario to our sales team at Dell and they came back >> with all manner of SAN, DAS, and configuration costing as much as >> $50k. > HAHAHAHAHA.... Don't do that. Dell is making the assumption you > won't do your homework. Make sure you cross quote with IBM, Compaq > and Penguin Computing... Indeed. -- (format nil "~S@~S" "cbbrowne" "gmail.com") http://linuxdatabases.info/info/rdbms.html Rules of the Evil Overlord #141. "As an alternative to not having children, I will have _lots_ of children. My sons will be too busy jockeying for position to ever be a real threat, and the daughters will all sabotage each other's attempts to win the hero." <http://www.eviloverlord.com/>