Regarding the hardware the system is running on: It's an HP Proliant DL-180 G5 server.
Here are the specs... our actual configuration only has one CPU, and 16G of RAM. The model of the 2 disks I will post later today, when I get to the server. I was with many things, sorry. http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12903_na/12903_na.HTML http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/DS_00126/DS_00126.pdf *At A Glance *The HP ProLiant DL180 G5 is a low cost high capacity storage optimized 2-way server that delivers on a history of design excellence and 2U density for a variety of rack deployments and applications. - Processors: - Supports up to two Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® processors: 5400 sequence with 12MB Level 2 cache - Intel® 5100 Chipset - Memory: - Up to 32 GB of memory supported by six (6) PC2-5300 (667 MHz) DDR2 memory slots - Internal Drive Support: - Supports up to twelve via CTO with controller or up to eight via BTO with the addition of a controller: - Hot Plug Serial ATA (SATA) 3.5"hard drives; or - Hot Plug Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) 3.5"hard drives *NOTE:* 4 hard drives are supported standard via BTO. 8 hard drive support requires the addition of a Smart Array or HBA controller. Hot Plug and SAS functionality require the addition of a Smart Array or HBA controller. 12 hard drive support available via CTO only and requires a SAS controller that supports expanders. - Internal storage capacity: - SATA Models: Up to 12.0TB (12 x 1TB Hot Plug 3.5" hard drives) - SAS Model: Up to 12.0TB (12 x 1TB Hot Plug 3.5" hard drives) - Network Controller: - One integrated NC105i PCI-e Gigabit NIC (embedded) (Wake on LAN and PXE capable) - Storage Controllers: - HP Embedded SATA RAID Controller (up to 4 hard drive support on standard BTO models) *NOTE:* Transfer rate 1.5 Gb/s SATA - Expansion Slots: - One available Low Profile x8 PCI-Express slot using a Low profile Riser. - Two Full Height/ Full Length Riser options - Option1: 2 full-length/full-height PCI-Express x8 connector slots (x4 electrical - Standard) - Option2: full-length/full-height riser with 2 PCI-X Slots(Optional) - Infrastructure Management: - Optional HP Lights Out 100c Remote Management card with Virtual KVM and Virtual Media support (includes IPMI2.0 and SMASH support) - USB Ports: - Seven USB ports (2) front, (4) rear, (1) internal - Optical Drive: - Support for one: - Optional Multi-bay DVD - Optional Floppy (USB only, USB key) - Power Supply: - 750W Power Supply (Optional Redundancy Hot Plug, Autoswitching) CSCI 2007/8 - 1200W High Efficiency Power Supply (Optional Redundancy Hot Plug, Autoswitching) (Optional) CSCI 2007/8 - *NOTE:* Climate Savers Computing Initiative, 2007-2008 Compliant - Form Factor: - 2U rack models Regarding the SATA RAID controller, on the other spec pages it says that for the 8 disks model (ours), it comes with a Smart Array E200. I will try to check out if we are using the original, since I recall hearing something about that our disks were SAS (Serial Attached SCSI), and I don't know if it is possible to connect those disks to embedded Smart Array E200 controller. Would it be possible? On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 4:13 PM, Eduardo Piombino <drak...@gmail.com> wrote: > Greg, I will post more detailed data as soon as I'm able to gather it. > > I was trying out if the cancellation of the ALTER cmd worked ok, I might > give the ALTER another try, and see how much CPU, RAM and IO usage gets > involved. I will be doing this monitoring with the process explorer from > sysinternals, but I don't know how I can make it to log the results. Do you > know any tool that you have used that can help me generate this evidence? I > will google a little as soon as possible. > > > > On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 3:46 PM, Greg Smith <g...@2ndquadrant.com> wrote: > >> Robert Haas wrote: >> >>> I'm kind of surprised that there are disk I/O subsystems that are so >>> bad that a single thread doing non-stop I/O can take down the whole >>> server. Is that normal? Does it happen on non-Windows operating >>> systems? What kind of hardware should I not buy to make sure this >>> doesn't happen to me? >>> >>> >> You can kill any hardware on any OS with the right abusive client. Create >> a wide table and insert a few million records into it with generate_series >> one day and watch what it does to queries trying to run in parallel with >> that. >> >> I think the missing step here to nail down exactly what's happening on >> Eduardo's system is that he should open up some of the Windows system >> monitoring tools, look at both disk I/O and CPU usage, and then watch what >> changes when the troublesome ALTER TABLE shows up. >> >> >> -- >> Greg Smith 2ndQuadrant Baltimore, MD >> PostgreSQL Training, Services and Support >> g...@2ndquadrant.com www.2ndQuadrant.com >> >> >
