Hi I'm going to install a new server and I'm looking for some advice about how I can help my database performing at its best. I'll be using a redhat ES 4 on a dual core opteron with 2 SCSI 10.000rpm disks in RAID1. The first question I have is, since I'd strongly prefer to use postgresql 8.1 or 8.2 instead of the 7.4 that comes with redhat, if someone else is using with success third party rpms with success in business critical applications. Database size: under 1 G Load: reaches 100 r/w queries per second peak time but the average is lower Filesystem: I'll probably have ext3 because of the redhat support. RAM: I will have enough to let postgresql use a quantity about the size of the db itself. I'll have just one pair of disks so Linux will live on the same disk array of the database, but obviously I can make any choice I like about the partitioning and my idea was to put postgresql data on a dedicated partition. As processes I'll have some other webby things running on the server but the I/O impact at disk level of these should be not that bad. Now aside of the filesystem/partitioning choice, I have experience with LVM, but I've never tried to take snapshots of postgresql databases and I'd be interested in knowing how well this works/perform and if there's any downside. I'd like even to read which procedures are common to restore a db from the LVM snapshot. As an alternative i was thinking about using the wal incremental backup strategy. In any case I'll take a pg_dump daily. I would appreciate even just interesting web links (I've already googled a bit so I'm quite aware of the most common stuff) Thanks Paolo
