Re: Can't get Dell PE T420 (Perc H710) perform better than a MacMini with PostgreSQL

[Pietro Pugni <pietro.pugni@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Jeff

The default collation for the database cluster is set when you create the cluster with initdb (the package you used to install postgresql might provide scripts that wrap initdb and call it something else, sorry I can't be much use with those).  

You can set it with --lc-collate flag to initdb, otherwise it is set based on the environment variables (LANG or LC_* variables) set in the shell you use to run initdb.

Note that you can create a new database in the cluster which has its own default which is different from the cluster's default.

guess what? it worked! Now I run the following command:

/usr/local/pgsql/bin/initdb -D /mnt/raid5/pg_data --no-locale --encoding=UTF8

Time execution for my reference transaction went from 2m9s to 1m18s where Mac Mini is 1m43s.

This is the best improvement after modifying BIOS settings.

I’ll do some testing. In the meanwhile I’ve made some kernel changes which may help in heavy workloads (at the moment they don't affect performance).

I should offer you a dinner…

Thank you a lot. Now I’m looking to push it faster (I think it can goes faster than this!).

Best regards,

 Pietro