User-Agent: Microsoft-Entourage/11.2.5.060620
Date: Wed, 06 Dec 2006 08:21:43 -0800
Subject: Re: File Systems Compared
From: "Luke Lonergan" <llonergan@greenplum.com>
To: "Brian Hurt" <bhurt@janestcapital.com>,
 "Brian Wipf" <brian@clickspace.com>
cc: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org
Message-ID: <C19C2E17.14DD1%llonergan@greenplum.com>
Thread-Topic: [PERFORM] File Systems Compared
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Brian,

On 12/6/06 8:02 AM, "Brian Hurt" <bhurt@janestcapital.com> wrote:

> These numbers are close enough to bus-saturation rates

PCIX is 1GB/s + and the memory architecture is 20GB/s+, though each CPU is
likely to obtain only 2-3GB/s.

We routinely achieve 1GB/s I/O rate on two 3Ware adapters and 2GB/s on the
Sun X4500 with ZFS.

> advise new people setting up systems to go this route over spending
> money on some fancy storage area network solution

People buy SANs for interesting reasons, some of them having to do with the
manageability features of high end SANs.  I've heard it said in those cases
that "performance doesn't matter much".

As you suggest, database replication provides one of those features, and
Solaris ZFS has many of the data management features found in high end SANs.
Perhaps we can get the best of both?

In the end, I think SAN vs. server storage is a religious battle.

- Luke