X-Original-To: pgsql-performance-postgresql.org@localhost.postgresql.org Received: from localhost (av.hub.org [200.46.204.144]) by postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C74479DCA0C for ; Wed, 18 Jan 2006 18:15:29 -0400 (AST) Received: from postgresql.org ([200.46.204.71]) by localhost (av.hub.org [200.46.204.144]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id 04337-06 for ; Wed, 18 Jan 2006 18:15:31 -0400 (AST) X-Greylist: from auto-whitelisted by SQLgrey- Received: from floppy.pyrenet.fr (floppy.pyrenet.fr [194.116.145.2]) by postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 146F99DC87F for ; Wed, 18 Jan 2006 18:15:27 -0400 (AST) Received: by floppy.pyrenet.fr (Postfix, from userid 106) id 08D2B30F0A; Wed, 18 Jan 2006 23:15:29 +0100 (MET) From: William Yu X-Newsgroups: pgsql.performance Subject: Re: 3WARE Card performance boost? Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 14:15:22 -0800 Organization: Hub.Org Networking Services Lines: 27 Message-ID: References: <00ee01c61c5a$5db2c870$d7cc178a@uni> <20060118220232.GB1393@uio.no> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: usenet@news.hub.org User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5 (Windows/20051201) In-Reply-To: <20060118220232.GB1393@uio.no> To: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new at hub.org X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.068 required=5 tests=[AWL=0.068] X-Spam-Score: 0.068 X-Spam-Level: X-Archive-Number: 200601/314 X-Sequence-Number: 16792 Steinar H. Gunderson wrote: > On Wed, Jan 18, 2006 at 01:58:09PM -0800, William Yu wrote: >> The key is getting a card with the ability to upgrade the onboard ram. >> >> Our previous setup was a LSI MegaRAID 320-1 (128MB), 4xRAID10, >> fsync=off. Replaced it with a ARC-1170 (1GB) w/ 24x7200RPM SATA2 drives >> (split into 3 8-drive RAID6 arrays) and performance for us is through >> the ceiling. > > Well, the fact that you went from four to 24 disks would perhaps be a bigger > factor than the amount of RAM... > > /* Steinar */ Actually no. Our 2xOpteron 244 server is NOT fast enough to drive an array this large. That's why we had to split it up into 3 different arrays. I tried all different RAID configs and once past about 8 drives, I got the same performance no matter what because the CPU was pegged at 100%. Right now, 2 of the arrays are just mirroring each other because we can't seem utilize the performance right now. (Also protects against cabling/power supply issues as we're using 3 seperate external enclosures.) The 1GB RAM is much bigger because it almost completely hides the write activity. Looking at iostat while all our jobs are running, there's almost no disk activity. If I manually type "sync", I see 1 big 250MB-500MB write storm for 2 seconds but otherwise, writes just slowly dribble out to disk.