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Message-Id: <7.0.1.0.2.20060215142631.03bbaf90@earthlink.net>
Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 14:53:28 -0500
To: "Jeremy Haile" <jhaile@fastmail.fm>,pgsql-performance@postgresql.org
From: Ron <rjpeace@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: Reliability recommendations
In-Reply-To: <1140020490.9369.254450363@webmail.messagingengine.com>
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	<1140018387.43f34cd36a076@imp2-g19.free.fr>
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At 11:21 AM 2/15/2006, Jeremy Haile wrote:
>We are a small company looking to put together the most cost effective
>solution for our production database environment.  Currently in
>production Postgres 8.1 is running on this machine:
>
>Dell 2850
>2 x 3.0 Ghz Xeon 800Mhz FSB 2MB Cache
>4 GB DDR2 400 Mhz
>2 x 73 GB 10K SCSI RAID 1 (for xlog and OS)
>4 x 146 GB 10K SCSI RAID 10 (for postgres data)
>Perc4ei controller
>
>The above is a standard Dell box with nothing added or modified beyond
>the options available directly through Dell. We had a bad processor last
>week that effectively put us down for an entire weekend. Though it was
>the web server that failed, the experience has caused us to step back
>and spend time coming up with a more reliable/fail-safe solution that
>can reduce downtime.
>
>Our load won't be substantial so extreme performance and load balancing
>are not huge concerns. We are looking for good performance, at a good
>price, configured in the most redundant, high availability manner
>possible. Availability is the biggest priority.
>
>I sent our scenario to our sales team at Dell and they came back with
>all manner of SAN, DAS, and configuration costing as much as $50k.
>
>We have the budget to purchase 2-3 additional machines along the lines
>of the one listed above. As a startup with a limited budget, what would
>this list suggest as options for clustering/replication or setting our
>database up well in general?

1= Tell Dell "Thanks but no thanks." and do not buy any more 
equipment from them.  Their value per $$ is less than other options 
available to you.

2= The current best bang for the buck HW (and in many cases, best 
performing as well) for pg:
   a= AMD K8 and K9 (dual core) CPUs.  Particularly the A64 X2 3800+ 
when getting the most for your $$ matters a lot
        pg gets a nice performance boost from running in 64b.
   b= Decent Kx server boards are available from Gigabyte, IWill, 
MSI, Supermicro, and Tyan to name a few.
        IWill has a 2P 16 DIMM slot board that is particularly nice 
for a server that needs lots of RAM.
   c= Don't bother with SCSI or FC HD's unless you are doing the most 
demanding kind of OLTP.  SATA II HD's provide better value.
   d= HW RAID controllers are only worth it in certain 
scenarios.  Using RAID 5 almost always means you should use a HW RAID 
controller.
   e= The only HW RAID controllers worth the $$ for you are 3ware 
Escalade 9550SX's and Areca ARC-11xx or ARC-12xx's.
   *For the vast majority of throughput situations, the ARC-1xxx's 
with >= 1GB of battery backed WB cache are the best value*
   f= 1GB RAM sticks are cheap enough and provide enough value that 
you should max out any system you get with them.
   g= for +high+ speed fail over, Chelsio and others are now making 
PCI-X and PCI-E 10GbE NICs at reasonable prices.
The above should serve as a good "pick list" for the components of 
any servers you need.

3= The most economically sound HW and SW architecture that best suits 
your performance and reliability needs is context dependent to your 
specific circumstances.


Where are you located?
Ron