Re: [GENERAL] Is this good spec for a PostgreSQL server?
On Wednesday 19 September 2007, Bjørn T Johansen wrote: It's a Dell server with the following spec: PE2950 Quad-Core Xeon E5335 2.0GHz, dual 4GB 667MHz memory 3 x 73GB SAS 15000 rpm disk PERC 5/I Integrated controller card (8 ports, 256MB cache, battery backup) x 6 backplane Asking is this a good database server? is a meaningless question without more information. I have an ancient 500 Mhz Pentium III that runs a lightweight Postgres database excellently, but I wouldn't recommend it for enterprise duty! I've admin'd a few Dell servers, and consistently ran into minor driver niggles. They often pick hardware that isn't supported in the source kernel tree, though to their credit, they DO usually provide appropriate drivers. In one case, it was an ethernet driver that was unsupported by my distro. (RedHat/CentOS) There were sources available that I could recompile, and I did, and it worked fine, but it was sure a pain in the [EMAIL PROTECTED] to have to recompile it everytime a new kernel came out, and there was no way to test whether or not the recompile took until the reboot - and the reboot is the WORST way to test an ethernet driver when you are admining remotely. Personally, I prefer generic, white-box solutions, like a Tyan reference system, or maybe a SuperMicro. They tend to be conservative in their hardware choices, they're quite reliable, very solid performers, and for the price of one on brand server, you can get two whitebox systems and have a hot failover on site. I have 4x quad-core Opteron 1U rackmounts that I've been blissfully happy with, 2x 300 GB 10k SCSI (software RAID 1), 4 GB of RAM, dual Gb NICs. I can pull any one of the RAID 1 drives out any machine, plug it into any other machine, and have a working, booted system in 5 minutes. No driver headaches, no hassle, with excellent reliability under load. (knocks on wood) Each person picks their favorite blend of poison, I guess. -Ben -- I kept looking for somebody to solve the problem. Then I realized - I am somebody. -- Author Unknown -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 4: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org/
Re: [GENERAL] Is this good spec for a PostgreSQL server?
On Thu, 2007-09-20 at 07:55 -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: On 09/20/07 05:43, Ow Mun Heng wrote: hehe.. I'll end up running it on a low-end desktop w/ 1GB ram and a celeron 2G processor w/ ~30GB data/month. I probably would too, if I wasn't half-way across the country from the DC. Just curious, Why would being half-way across the country got to do with the server specs? Better specs - Less Issues? :-) ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 3: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq
Re: [GENERAL] Is this good spec for a PostgreSQL server?
On Mon, 24 Sep 2007, Ow Mun Heng wrote: Just curious, Why would being half-way across the country got to do with the server specs? Better specs - Less Issues? :-) I think he was referring to the management boards that x86 servers, not low-end desktops, tend to provide, nowadays. Derek E. Lewis dlewis at solnetworks.net http://delewis.blogspot.com ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend
Re: [GENERAL] Is this good spec for a PostgreSQL server?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 09/23/07 22:40, Ow Mun Heng wrote: On Thu, 2007-09-20 at 07:55 -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: On 09/20/07 05:43, Ow Mun Heng wrote: hehe.. I'll end up running it on a low-end desktop w/ 1GB ram and a celeron 2G processor w/ ~30GB data/month. I probably would too, if I wasn't half-way across the country from the DC. Just curious, Why would being half-way across the country got to do with the server specs? Better specs - Less Issues? :-) If I was plugged into the company's LAN, I also could use my low-end desktop as a database server... - -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good! -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFG90sGS9HxQb37XmcRAp2vAKDE3AMdELX0JDCVfPU5fndHwE9GzwCfeLIL WTLQo+YUM43aOTYNOW6Gmm0= =lWWq -END PGP SIGNATURE- ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
Re: [GENERAL] Is this good spec for a PostgreSQL server?
On Wed, 2007-09-19 at 08:40 -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: Yes, I think that it's a bit excessive but the company can afford it so why not... :) Lucky SOB. I can't get my company to spring for a dual-core 2GB system with SATA drives. hehe.. I'll end up running it on a low-end desktop w/ 1GB ram and a celeron 2G processor w/ ~30GB data/month. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 5: don't forget to increase your free space map settings
Re: [GENERAL] Is this good spec for a PostgreSQL server?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 09/20/07 05:43, Ow Mun Heng wrote: On Wed, 2007-09-19 at 08:40 -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: Yes, I think that it's a bit excessive but the company can afford it so why not... :) Lucky SOB. I can't get my company to spring for a dual-core 2GB system with SATA drives. hehe.. I'll end up running it on a low-end desktop w/ 1GB ram and a celeron 2G processor w/ ~30GB data/month. I probably would too, if I wasn't half-way across the country from the DC. - -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good! -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFG8m3FS9HxQb37XmcRAmrnAJ404YJyOqnJGDxviAjFWAlmMdyaawCcCM/a Gud2Ef//IuG3YBGSn8Gb/uU= =SO8R -END PGP SIGNATURE- ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend
Re: [GENERAL] Is this good spec for a PostgreSQL server?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 09/19/07 07:33, Bjørn T Johansen wrote: Well, it isn't really the largest database or the database that need the most performance... At the moment, the database isn't larger than 15MB and is growing slowly... It is a webapp that is That'll fit in shared memory. Very fast. Where will it be in a year? using the database and at the most (at the moment) there is about 12-14 concurrent users and not much data volume... How many users in a year? We are thinking about this spec. because the web app is a java app, and we need need something that can run java fast as well as postgresql... 12-14 users on a Quad-core system with 4GB RAM? Am I so old that (even accepting Tomcat and Java) that seems excessive? - -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good! -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFG8R04S9HxQb37XmcRAhblAJ9AIS90c+xjOs4KOLqkYOg7gf2PwgCgleFw gZ82nICVs6tEKVY7IxGD1Fs= =xrCi -END PGP SIGNATURE- ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
Re: [GENERAL] Is this good spec for a PostgreSQL server?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 09/19/07 06:30, Bjørn T Johansen wrote: It's a Dell server with the following spec: PE2950 Quad-Core Xeon E5335 2.0GHz, dual 4GB 667MHz memory 3 x 73GB SAS 15000 rpm disk PERC 5/I Integrated controller card (8 ports, 256MB cache, battery backup) x 6 backplane You *know* we're going to say something obvious like it depends on the size of the database and the workload. Is this ok to run PostgreSQL 8.2.x and Tomcat on? And does anyone know if this PERC controller is supported under Linux (not heard of it before...) Google says yes. - -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good! -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFG8Rn3S9HxQb37XmcRAmEXAKDuh3tm+8am5Baopiwzinxh009xdgCdGgxS 5RhuTNIo88h227syqIIzfdA= =/YEE -END PGP SIGNATURE- ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
Re: [GENERAL] Is this good spec for a PostgreSQL server?
Bjørn T Johansen wrote: It's a Dell server with the following spec: PE2950 Quad-Core Xeon E5335 2.0GHz, dual 4GB 667MHz memory 3 x 73GB SAS 15000 rpm disk PERC 5/I Integrated controller card (8 ports, 256MB cache, battery backup) x 6 backplane Is this ok to run PostgreSQL 8.2.x and Tomcat on? And does anyone know if this PERC controller is supported under Linux (not heard of it before...) I've been running Gentoo Linux on a PE2950 with PERC 5 controller, so yes Linux runs on it. (Not sure about the I... not sure in what flavor the PERC 5 exists.) Regards, Roppert Regards, BTJ ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend
Re: [GENERAL] Is this good spec for a PostgreSQL server?
On Wed, 19 Sep 2007 07:59:36 -0500 Ron Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 09/19/07 07:33, Bjørn T Johansen wrote: Well, it isn't really the largest database or the database that need the most performance... At the moment, the database isn't larger than 15MB and is growing slowly... It is a webapp that is That'll fit in shared memory. Very fast. Where will it be in a year? Well, twice as much I guess... using the database and at the most (at the moment) there is about 12-14 concurrent users and not much data volume... How many users in a year? It's an internal webapp for a company, so I guess not that much more... We are thinking about this spec. because the web app is a java app, and we need need something that can run java fast as well as postgresql... 12-14 users on a Quad-core system with 4GB RAM? Am I so old that (even accepting Tomcat and Java) that seems excessive? Yes, I think that it's a bit excessive but the company can afford it so why not... :) BTJ ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 5: don't forget to increase your free space map settings
Re: [GENERAL] Is this good spec for a PostgreSQL server?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 09/19/07 08:32, Bjørn T Johansen wrote: On Wed, 19 Sep 2007 07:59:36 -0500 Ron Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 09/19/07 07:33, Bjørn T Johansen wrote: Well, it isn't really the largest database or the database that need the most performance... At the moment, the database isn't larger than 15MB and is growing slowly... It is a webapp that is That'll fit in shared memory. Very fast. Where will it be in a year? Well, twice as much I guess... using the database and at the most (at the moment) there is about 12-14 concurrent users and not much data volume... How many users in a year? It's an internal webapp for a company, so I guess not that much more... We are thinking about this spec. because the web app is a java app, and we need need something that can run java fast as well as postgresql... 12-14 users on a Quad-core system with 4GB RAM? Am I so old that (even accepting Tomcat and Java) that seems excessive? Yes, I think that it's a bit excessive but the company can afford it so why not... :) Lucky SOB. I can't get my company to spring for a dual-core 2GB system with SATA drives. - -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good! -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFG8Sa4S9HxQb37XmcRAiOzAKDh3TGGuYLoJvK5bAJzGfouYDqVeQCgzcp4 lUjG26gFkQwccLuG9WuT+Do= =oFhQ -END PGP SIGNATURE- ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 5: don't forget to increase your free space map settings
Re: [GENERAL] Is this good spec for a PostgreSQL server?
On 9/19/07, Ron Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 09/19/07 08:32, Bjørn T Johansen wrote: On Wed, 19 Sep 2007 07:59:36 -0500 Am I so old that (even accepting Tomcat and Java) that seems excessive? Yes, I think that it's a bit excessive but the company can afford it so why not... :) Lucky SOB. I can't get my company to spring for a dual-core 2GB system with SATA drives. Hehe. I wanted a new reporting server so I wound up donating a 4 port SATA card for expanding an old workstation. Now I just need to stuff two more drives into it, bringing it up to a 6 drive sw RAID 10. Built it in a day. Meanwhile, the project to build a RAC cluster has been ongoing for about 2 months. But it's close! :) ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
Re: [GENERAL] Is this good spec for a PostgreSQL server?
Hi, you have forgot to note some very important information - what load do you expect and what is the size of the database? Is this an upgrade (is the database already running somewhere - this would give you some performance requirements) or is it a completely new database? Hom nay users / transactions do you expect? Anyway the machine seems quite powerful to me - maybe I'd use more RAM but that's easy to do in the future and depends on the size of the dabase. The disks seem quite fast, just think about partitioning (raid scheme, where to put xlog, etc.) I guess we have PERC in some of our Dell servers, and it works fine - but I'm not sure about the exact type / version as I'm not responsible for the servers. Tomas It's a Dell server with the following spec: PE2950 Quad-Core Xeon E5335 2.0GHz, dual 4GB 667MHz memory 3 x 73GB SAS 15000 rpm disk PERC 5/I Integrated controller card (8 ports, 256MB cache, battery backup) x 6 backplane Is this ok to run PostgreSQL 8.2.x and Tomcat on? And does anyone know if this PERC controller is supported under Linux (not heard of it before...) Regards, BTJ -- --- Bjørn T Johansen [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Someone wrote: I understand that if you play a Windows CD backwards you hear strange Satanic messages To which someone replied: It's even worse than that; play it forwards and it installs Windows --- ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
Re: [GENERAL] Is this good spec for a PostgreSQL server?
On Sep 19, 2007, at 6:30 AM, Bjørn T Johansen wrote: It's a Dell server with the following spec: PE2950 Quad-Core Xeon E5335 2.0GHz, dual 4GB 667MHz memory 3 x 73GB SAS 15000 rpm disk PERC 5/I Integrated controller card (8 ports, 256MB cache, battery backup) x 6 backplane RAID5 is not a recipe for performance on a database, if that's what you were thinking. Of course, without having any idea of database size or transaction rate, it's impossible to tell you if that's a good server for your needs or not. Maybe all you need is a 486. :) -- Decibel!, aka Jim C. Nasby, Database Architect [EMAIL PROTECTED] Give your computer some brain candy! www.distributed.net Team #1828 ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 4: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org/
Re: [GENERAL] Is this good spec for a PostgreSQL server?
Well, it isn't really the largest database or the database that need the most performance... At the moment, the database isn't larger than 15MB and is growing slowly... It is a webapp that is using the database and at the most (at the moment) there is about 12-14 concurrent users and not much data volume... We are thinking about this spec. because the web app is a java app, and we need need something that can run java fast as well as postgresql... BTJ On Wed, 19 Sep 2007 14:11:01 +0200 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, you have forgot to note some very important information - what load do you expect and what is the size of the database? Is this an upgrade (is the database already running somewhere - this would give you some performance requirements) or is it a completely new database? Hom nay users / transactions do you expect? Anyway the machine seems quite powerful to me - maybe I'd use more RAM but that's easy to do in the future and depends on the size of the dabase. The disks seem quite fast, just think about partitioning (raid scheme, where to put xlog, etc.) I guess we have PERC in some of our Dell servers, and it works fine - but I'm not sure about the exact type / version as I'm not responsible for the servers. Tomas It's a Dell server with the following spec: PE2950 Quad-Core Xeon E5335 2.0GHz, dual 4GB 667MHz memory 3 x 73GB SAS 15000 rpm disk PERC 5/I Integrated controller card (8 ports, 256MB cache, battery backup) x 6 backplane Is this ok to run PostgreSQL 8.2.x and Tomcat on? And does anyone know if this PERC controller is supported under Linux (not heard of it before...) Regards, BTJ -- --- Bjørn T Johansen [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Someone wrote: I understand that if you play a Windows CD backwards you hear strange Satanic messages To which someone replied: It's even worse than that; play it forwards and it installs Windows --- ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 3: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq
Re: [GENERAL] Is this good spec for a PostgreSQL server?
Bjørn T Johansen [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: It's a Dell server with the following spec: PE2950 Quad-Core Xeon E5335 2.0GHz, dual 4GB 667MHz memory 3 x 73GB SAS 15000 rpm disk PERC 5/I Integrated controller card (8 ports, 256MB cache, battery backup) x 6 backplane Is this ok to run PostgreSQL 8.2.x and Tomcat on? And does anyone know if this PERC controller is supported under Linux (not heard of it before...) PERC is Dell's name from whatever RAID OEM flavour of the week they're buying. I think the PERC 5 is going to want the megaraid driver which is in the stock kernel tree but may or may not be compiled in your binary kernel distribution packages. -- Gregory Stark EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 9: In versions below 8.0, the planner will ignore your desire to choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not match
Re: [GENERAL] Is this good spec for a PostgreSQL server?
On Wed, 2007-09-19 at 15:32 +0200, Bjørn T Johansen wrote: Well, it isn't really the largest database or the database that need the most performance... At the moment, the database isn't larger than 15MB and is growing slowly... It is a webapp that is That'll fit in shared memory. Very fast. Where will it be in a year? Well, twice as much I guess... using the database and at the most (at the moment) there is about 12-14 concurrent users and not much data volume... How many users in a year? It's an internal webapp for a company, so I guess not that much more... I think, by far, your biggest concern is going to be reliability and availability. It doesn't sound like you're really worried about performance. In that case, you might want to do RAID-1 or RAID-10 (requires at least 4 drives, of course). Make sure you disable write caching on the individual drives, I think it's actually enabled by default (weird setting for a RAID controller). It's safe to enable writeback caching on the battery backed controller, but I'd advise leaving it off. There's no reason to worry about the battery if you don't need the performance anyway (however, it will help your write latency, so you still might consider it). Get dual power supplies to mitigate the chance of a power supply failure, even if you don't have two independent circuits. Oh, and if you're running linux make sure to use a safe setting for these settings: vm.oom-kill vm.overcommit_ratio vm.overcommit_memory The default is not very safe for postgresql*. If a java process gets out of control and eats memory, there's a good chance that it will kill postgresql before it kills the out-of-control java process :( Regards, Jeff Davis *: I consider this a linux bug: http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/2/9/275 ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 3: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq
Re: [GENERAL] Is this good spec for a PostgreSQL server?
Ok, thx for the advice :) BTJ On Wed, 19 Sep 2007 10:51:57 -0700 Jeff Davis [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, 2007-09-19 at 15:32 +0200, Bjørn T Johansen wrote: Well, it isn't really the largest database or the database that need the most performance... At the moment, the database isn't larger than 15MB and is growing slowly... It is a webapp that is That'll fit in shared memory. Very fast. Where will it be in a year? Well, twice as much I guess... using the database and at the most (at the moment) there is about 12-14 concurrent users and not much data volume... How many users in a year? It's an internal webapp for a company, so I guess not that much more... I think, by far, your biggest concern is going to be reliability and availability. It doesn't sound like you're really worried about performance. In that case, you might want to do RAID-1 or RAID-10 (requires at least 4 drives, of course). Make sure you disable write caching on the individual drives, I think it's actually enabled by default (weird setting for a RAID controller). It's safe to enable writeback caching on the battery backed controller, but I'd advise leaving it off. There's no reason to worry about the battery if you don't need the performance anyway (however, it will help your write latency, so you still might consider it). Get dual power supplies to mitigate the chance of a power supply failure, even if you don't have two independent circuits. Oh, and if you're running linux make sure to use a safe setting for these settings: vm.oom-kill vm.overcommit_ratio vm.overcommit_memory The default is not very safe for postgresql*. If a java process gets out of control and eats memory, there's a good chance that it will kill postgresql before it kills the out-of-control java process :( Regards, Jeff Davis *: I consider this a linux bug: http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/2/9/275 ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
