For a DSS type workload with PostgreSQL where you end up with single
long running queries on postgresql with about 100GB, you better use
something like Sun Fire V40z with those fast Ultra320 internal drives.
This might be perfect low cost complete database in a box.
Sun Fire T2000 is great for OLTP where you can end up with hundreds of
users doing quick and small lookups and T2000 can crank simple thread
executions far better than others. However when it comes to long running
queries you end up using 1/32 of the power and may not live up to your
expectations. For example consider your PostgreSQL talking to Apache
WebServer all on T2000... You can put them in separate zones if you have
different administrators for them. :-)
As for PostgreSQL on Solaris, I already have the best parameters to use
on Solaris based on my tests, the default odatasync hurts performance on
Solaris, so does checkpoint segments, others are tweaked so that they
are set for bigger databases and hence may not show much difference on
performances...
That said I will still be interested to see your app performance with
postgreSQL on Sun Fire T2000 as there are always ways of perseverence to
improve performance :-)
Regards,
Jignesh
Juan Casero (FL FLC) wrote:
Because I plan to develop a rather large (for us anyway) data warehouse
with PostgreSQL. I am looking for the right hardware that can handle
queries on a database that might grow to over a 100 gigabytes. Right
now our decision support system based on postgresql 8.1.3 stores retail
sales information for about 4 four years back *but* only as weekly
summaries. I want to build the system so it can handle daily sales
transactions also. You can imagine how many more records this will
involve so I am looking for hardware that can give me the performance I
need to make this project useable. In other words parsing and loading
the daily transaction logs for our stores is likely to take huge amounts
of effort. I need a machine that can complete the task in a reasonable
amount of time. As people start to query the database to find sales
related reports and information I need to make sure the queries will run
reasonably fast for them. I have already hand optimized all of my
queries on the current system. But currently I only have weekly sales
summaries. Other divisions in our company have done a similar project
using MS SQL Server on SMP hardware far outclassing the database server
I currently use and they report heavy loads on the server with less than
ideal query run times. I am sure I can do my part to optimize the
queries once I start this project but there is only so much you can do.
At some point you just need more powerful hardware. This is where I am
at right now. Apart from that since I will only get this one chance to
buy a new server for data processing I need to make sure that I buy
something that can grow over time as our needs change. I don't want to
buy a server only to find out later that it cannot meet our needs with
future database projects. I have to balance a limited budget, room for
future performance growth, and current system requirements. Trust me it
isn't easy.
Juan
-----Original Message-----
From: Josh Berkus [mailto:josh@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, April 06, 2006 2:57 AM
To: pgsql-performance@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: Juan Casero (FL FLC); Luke Lonergan
Subject: Re: [PERFORM] Sun Fire T2000 and PostgreSQL 8.1.3
Juan,
Ok that is beginning to become clear to me. Now I need to determine
if this server is worth the investment for us. Maybe it is not a
speed daemon but to be honest the licensing costs of an SMP aware
RDBMS is outside our budget.
You still haven't explained why you want multi-threaded queries. This
is sounding like keeping up with the Joneses.
--
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco
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