Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2007 12:08:30 -0600
From: Frank Wiles <frank@wiles.org>
To: "Charles A. Landemaine" <landemaine@gmail.com>
Cc: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: PostgreSQL to host e-mail?
Message-Id: <20070104120830.d002d90e.frank@wiles.org>
In-Reply-To: <e6575a30701041000u64d3c8c1sff6590724c264278@mail.gmail.com>
References: <e6575a30701041000u64d3c8c1sff6590724c264278@mail.gmail.com>
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On Thu, 4 Jan 2007 15:00:05 -0300
"Charles A. Landemaine" <landemaine@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm building an e-mail service that has two requirements: It should
> index messages on the fly to have lightening search results, and it
> should be able to handle large amounts of space. The server is going
> to be dedicated only for e-mail with 250GB of storage in Raid-5. I'd
> like to know how PostgreSQL could handle such a large amount of data.
> How much RAM would I need? I expect my users to have a 10GB quota per
> e-mail account.

   Well this is a bit like asking "what's the top speed for a van that
   can carry 8 people", it really isn't enough information to be able
   to give you a good answer.  

   It depends on everything from the data model you use to represent
   your E-mail messages, to configuration, to hardware speeds, etc. 

   In general, you want as much RAM as you can afford for the project,
   the more the better.  I'd say 2-4GB is the minimum. And RAID-5 isn't
   very good for database work in general, you'll get better performance
   from RAID 1+0. 

 ---------------------------------
   Frank Wiles <frank@wiles.org>
   http://www.wiles.org
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