On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 10:28 AM, Marcus Engene <mengpg2@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi list, > > Every now and then I have write peaks which causes annoying delay on my > website. No particular reason it seems, just that laws of probability > dictates that there will be peaks every now and then. > > Anyway, thinking of ways to make the peaks more bareable, I saw the new 9.1 > feature to bypass WAL. Problems is mainly that some statistics tables ("x > users clicked this link this month") clog the write cache, not more > important writes. I could live with restoring a nightly dump of these tables > and loose a days worth of logs. > > Though not keen on jumping over to early major versions an old idea of > putting WAL in RAM came back. Not RAM in main memory but some thingie > pretending to be a drive with proper battery backup. > > a) It seems to exist odd hardware with RAM modules and if lucky also battery > b) Some drive manufactureres have done hybird ram-spindle drives (compare > with possibly more common ssd-spindle hybrides). > > b) sounds slightly more appealing since it basically means I put everything > on those drives and it magically is faster. The a) alternatives also seemed > to be non ECC which is a no-no and disturbing. > > Does anyone here have any recommendations here? > > Pricing is not very important but reliability is. Have you ruled out SSD? They are a little new, but I'd be looking at the Intel 710. In every case I've seen SSD permanently ends I/O issues. DRAM storage solutions I find to be pricey and complicated when there are so many workable flash options out now. merlin -- Sent via pgsql-performance mailing list (pgsql-performance@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-performance