On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 8:27 PM, Scott Carey <scott@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> 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. >> > > For a permanent server, yes. But for a sort lease? You have to go with > what is easily available for lease, or work out something with a provider > where they buy the HW from you and manage/lease it back (some do this, but > all I've ever heard of involved 12+ servers to do so and sign on for 1 or 2 > years). True, but given the low cost of a high drive count machine with spares etc you can come away spending a lot less than by leasing. > Expecting full I/O performance out of a DELL with a PERC is not really > possible, but maybe that's not as important as a certain pricing model or > the flexibility? That is really an independent business decision. True. Plus if you only need 4 drives or something, you can do pretty well with a Dell with the RAID controller turned to JBOD and letting the linux kernel do the RAID work. > I'll also but a caveat to the '3ware' above -- the last few I've used were > slower than the PERC (9650 series versus PERC6, 9550 versus PERC5 -- all > tests with 12 SATA drives raid 10). > I have no experience with the 3ware 9690 series (SAS) though -- those might > be just fine. My experience is primarily with Areca 1100, 1200, and 1600 series controllers, but others on the list have done well with 3ware controllers. We have an 8 port 11xx series areca card at work running RAID-6 as a multipurpose server, and it's really quite fast and well behaved for sequential throughput. But the 16xx series cards stomp the 11xx series in the ground for random IOPS. -- Sent via pgsql-performance mailing list (pgsql-performance@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-performance
