On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 7:41 PM, Scott Carey <scott@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On 5/26/09 6:17 PM, "Greg Smith" <gsmith@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> On Tue, 26 May 2009, Joshua D. Drake wrote: >> >>> CMD doesn't rent hardware you would have to provide that, Rack Space >>> does. >> >> Part of the idea was to avoid buying a stack of servers, if this were just >> a "where do I put the boxes at?" problem I'd have just asked you about it >> already. I forgot to check Rack Space earlier, looks like they have Dell >> servers with up to 8 drives and a RAID controller in them available. >> Let's just hope it's not one of the completely useless PERC models there; >> can anyone confirm Dell's PowerEdge R900 has one of the decent performing >> PERC6 controllers I've heard rumors of in it? > > Every managed hosting provider I've seen uses RAID controllers and support > through the hardware provider. If its Dell its 99% likely a PERC (OEM'd > LSI). > HP, theirs (not sure who the OEM is), Sun theirs (OEM'd Adaptec). > > PERC6 in my testing was certainly better than PERC5, but its still sub-par > in sequential transfer rate or scaling up past 6 or so drives in a volume. > > I did go through the process of using a managed hosting provider and getting > custom RAID card and storage arrays -- but that takes a lot of hand-holding > and time, and will most certainly cause setup delays and service issues when > things go wrong and you've got the black-sheep server. Unless its > absolutely business critical to get that last 10%-20% performance, I would > go with whatever they have with no customization. > > Most likely if you ask for a database setup, they'll give you 6 or 8 drives > in raid-5. Most of what these guys do is set up LAMP cookie-cutters... > >> >> Craig, I share your concerns about outsourced hosting, but as the only >> custom application involved is one I build my own RPMs for I'm not really >> concerned about the system getting screwed up software-wise. The idea >> here is that I might rent an eval system to confirm performance is >> reasonable, and if it is then I'd be clear to get a bigger stack of them. >> Luckily there's a guy here who knows a bit about benchmarking for this >> sort of thing... Yeah, the OP would be much better served ordering a server with an Areca or Escalade / 3ware controller setup and ready to go, shipped to the hosting center and sshing in and doing the rest than letting a hosted solution company try to compete. You can get a nice 16x15K SAS disk machine with an Areca controller, dual QC cpus, and 16 to 32 gig ram for $6000 to $8000 ready to go. We've since repurposed our Dell / PERC machines as file servers and left the real database server work to our aberdeen machines. Trying to wring reasonable performance out of most Dell servers is a testament to frustration. -- Sent via pgsql-performance mailing list (pgsql-performance@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-performance
