Well, pre-compiled isn't going to make much of a difference
stability-wise. What you will run into is that very few people are
running PostgreSQL on your hardware, so it's possible you'd run into
some odd corner cases. I think it's pretty unlikely you'd lose data, but
you could end up with performance-related issues.
If you can, it'd be great to do some testing on that hardware to see if
you can break PostgreSQL.
It shouldn't be too hard to snag resources for an LPAR. In fact since it was one of the things I was looking at testing (postgres/LoP or Postgres/AIX).
I'll see what I can work out. If I can't get a CPU on the 570, we have a 520 that I should be able to use.
> This is true. In our case I couldn't get the approval for the new hardware
> since we had two x445 boxes sitting there doing nothing (I wanted them for
> our VMware environment personally). Another sticking point is finding a
> vendor that will provide a hardware support contract similar to what we have
> with our existing IBM hardware (24x7x4). Since IBM has f-all for Opteron
> based systems and we've sworn off Dell, I was pretty limited. HP was able to
> get in on a pilot program and we're considering them now for future hardware
> purchases but beyond Dell/IBM/HP, there's not much else that can provide the
> kind of hardware support turn-around we need.
What about Sun?
Good question. At the time, Sun was off again/on again with Linux. Quite honestly I'm not sure where Sun is headed. I actually suggested the Sun hardware for our last project (a Windows-platformed package we needed) but cost-wise, they were just too much compared to the HP solution. HP has a cluster-in-a-box solution that runs about 10K depending on your VAR (2 DL380 with shared SCSI to an MSA500 - sounds like a perfect VMware solution).
> >We've been thrilled with the performance of our DB2 systems that run on
> >> AIX/Power 5 but since the DB2 instance memory is limited to 18GB, we've
> >got
> >> two 86GB p570s sitting there being under utilized.
BTW, in a past life we moved a DB2 database off of Xeons and onto
RS/6000s with Power4. The difference was astounding.
I'm amazed myself. My last experience with AIX before this was pre Power4. AIX 5.3 on Power 5 is a sight to behold. I'm still cursing our DBAs for not realizing the 18GB instance memory thing though ;)
--
Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant jnasby@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Pervasive Software http://pervasive.com work: 512-231-6117
vcard: http://jim.nasby.net/pervasive.vcf cell: 512-569-9461
--
John E. Vincent
lusis.org@xxxxxxxxx
