On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 4:20 AM, Sim Zacks <sim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > We are about to build a new database server, our plan is to use Debian. > > Is there documentation of recommended server configurations for Linux, such > as kernel parameters, preferred file system, etc that work best with > postgresql? This really depends on your hardware. If you're running a battery backed caching RAID controller it's a good idea to lobotamize the io scheduler since it just gets in the way at that point: echo noop > /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler On our machines with 128G of ram, we have occasionally seen swap storms for no apparent reason, and have turned off swap. /sbin/swapoff -a On a machine with 16 or more cores, the linux kernel may decide to use the zone reclaim mode, which is supposed to keep memory pinned in the bank accessible by a certain cpu / core for things like virtualization. This leads to disasterous performance on file servers and pg servers. Turn it off in /etc/sysctl.conf: vm.zone_reclaim_mode = 0 For most uses, linux doesn't need a lot of tuning really. Turning the scheduler to noop gained us a bit of performance especially as load increases it's more noticeable that the OS is no longer trying to do the RAID controller's job. If you want to hunt for more tips, search through Greg Smith's site, or buy his excellent pg 9.0 performance book. It'll keep you occupied for days and days with all the cool stuff you can do to make fast pg machines. -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
