Message-ID: <514A5CAA.1080906@boreham.org>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 19:04:42 -0600
From: David Boreham <david_list@boreham.org>
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CC: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: New server setup
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On 3/20/2013 6:44 PM, David Rees wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 4:37 PM, David Boreham <david_list@boreham.org> wrote:
>> You might want to evaluate the performance you can achieve with a single-SSD
>> (use several for capacity by all means) before considering a RAID card + SSD
>> solution.
>> Again I bet it depends on the application but our experience with the older
>> Intel 710 series is that their performance out-runs the CPU, at least under
>> our PG workload.
> How many people are using a single enterprise grade SSD for production
> without RAID? I've had a few consumer grade SSDs brick themselves -
> but are the enterprise grade SSDs, like the new Intel S3700 which you
> can get in sizes up to 800GB, reliable enough to run as a single drive
> without RAID1? The performance of one is definitely good enough for
> most medium sized workloads without the complexity of a BBU RAID and
> multiple spinning disks...
>

You're replying to my post, but I'll raise my hand again :)

We run a bunch of single-socket 1U, short-depth machines (Supermicro 
chassis) using 1x Intel 710 drives (we'd use S3700 in new deployments 
today). The most recent of these have 128G and E5-2620 hex-core CPU and 
dissipate less than 150W at full-load.

Couldn't be happier with the setup. We have 18 months up time with no 
drive failures, running at several hundred wps 7x24. We also write 10's 
of GB of log files every day that are rotated, so the drives are getting 
beaten up on bulk data overwrites too.

There is of course a non-zero probability of some unpleasant firmware 
bug afflicting the drives (as with regular spinning drives), and 
initially we deployed a "spare" 10k HD in the chassis, spun-down, that 
would allow us to re-jigger the machines without SSD remotely (the data 
center is 1000 miles away). We never had to do that, and later 
deployments omitted the HD spare. We've also considered mixing SSD from 
two vendors for firmware-bug-diversity, but so far we only have one 
approved vendor (Intel).


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