What about filesystem properties?
on linux I am using:
ext3(with journal) and auto,rw,async,noatime,nodiratime
on disks for data and journal
I am unsure if I need a journal in the fs or if the db covers that
problem. With regards to that, do I then need to set some linux setting
to force inode syncing (dont rememver the name for the filesystem
structure in unix memory). The same question can be asked about the
async option.
any thoughts?
thomas
Greg Smith wrote:
On Tue, 2 Sep 2008, Thomas Finneid wrote:
You should try setting this to open_sync , that can be considerably
faster for some write-heavy situations. Make sure to test that
throughly though, there are occasional reports of issues with that
setting under Linux
The production machine is Solaris 10 running on a Sun v980. Do you
know of it has any issues like these?
On Solaris you can safely use open_datasync which is a bit better than
open_sync. For best results, you need to separate the xlog onto a
separate partition and mount it using forcedirectio, because Postgres
doesn't know how to use direct I/O directly on Solaris yet.
Additionally, would I need to do any config changes when going from
linux to solaris?
Assuming the same amount of memory, the postgresql.conf should be
basically the same, except for the wal_sync_method change mentioned
above. If there's more RAM in the production server you can ramp up
shared_buffers, effective_cache_size, and possibly work_mem
proportionately. The settings I suggested for maintenance_work_mem and
wal_buffers are already near the useful upper limits for those parameters.
There are a few operating system level things you should consider
tweaking on Solaris 10 for better PostgreSQL performance. You need to
be a bit more careful about the parameters used for the filesystem than
on Linux, and the settings there vary considerably depending on whether
you're using UFS or ZFS. The best intro to that I know of is at
http://blogs.sun.com/jkshah/entry/postgresql_east_2008_talk_best ; I
added some clarification to a few points in there and some other Solaris
notes at http://notemagnet.blogspot.com/2008_04_01_archive.html Those
should get you started.
I hope you're already looking into some sort of repeatable benchmarking
that's representative of your application you can run. You'll go crazy
playing with all these settings without something like that.
--
* Greg Smith gsmith@xxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD
