Message-ID: <448F1591.4000404@commandprompt.com>
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 12:44:17 -0700
From: "Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com>
Organization: Command Prompt, Inc.
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To: Scott Marlowe <smarlowe@g2switchworks.com>
CC: steve.poe@gmail.com, pgsql-performance@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Which processor runs better for Postgresql?
References: <1150221760.12191.25.camel@amd64-gentoo-laptop>
	<1150225202.29299.51.camel@state.g2switchworks.com>
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Scott Marlowe wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-06-13 at 13:02, Steve Poe wrote:
>> I have a client who is running Postgresql 7.4.x series database
>> (required to use 7.4.x). They are planning an upgrade to a new server.
>> They are insistent on Dell.
> 
> Do they have a logical reason for this, or is it mostly hand-waving? 

They probably do. They have probably standardized on Dell hardware. It 
is technically a dumb reason, but from a business standpoint it makes sense.

  My
> experience has been hand waving.  Last company I was at, the CIO bragged
> about having saved a million a year on server by going with Dell.  His
> numbers were made up, and, in fact, we spent a large portion of each
> week babysitting those god awful 2600 series machines with adaptec cards
> and the serverworks chipset.  And they were slow compared to anything
> else with similar specs.

You can get extremely competitive quotes from IBM or HP as long as you 
say, "You are competing against Dell".

> Dells tend to perform poorly, period.  They choose low end parts (the
> 2600's Serverworks chipset is widely regarded as one of the slowest
> chipset for the P-IV there is.) and then mucking around with the BIOS of
> the add in cards to make them somewhat stable with their dodgy hardware.

I can confirm this.

>> I am hoping the client is willing to wait for Dell to ship a AMD
>> Opeteron-based server.

Tell them to go with an HP DL 385. They will be much happier.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake


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