Re: [PERFORM] SCSI vs SATA

2007-04-05 Thread Tom Lane
Greg Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Fri, 6 Apr 2007, Tom Lane wrote: >> It seems hard to believe that the vendors themselves wouldn't burn in >> the drives for half a day, if that's all it takes to eliminate a large >> fraction of infant mortality. > I've read that much of the damage that

Re: [PERFORM] Premature view materialization in 8.2?

2007-04-05 Thread Tom Lane
"Jonathan Ellis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On 4/5/07, Tom Lane <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>> Is this a regression, or a "feature" of 8.2? >> >> Hard to say without EXPLAIN ANALYZE output to compare. > To my eye they are identical other than the speed but perhaps I am > missing something. Ye

Re: [PERFORM] SCSI vs SATA

2007-04-05 Thread Greg Smith
On Fri, 6 Apr 2007, Tom Lane wrote: It seems hard to believe that the vendors themselves wouldn't burn in the drives for half a day, if that's all it takes to eliminate a large fraction of infant mortality. I've read that much of the damage that causes hard drive infant mortality is related t

Re: [PERFORM] SCSI vs SATA

2007-04-05 Thread Tom Lane
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > On Thu, 5 Apr 2007, Ron wrote: >> Yep. Folks should google "bath tub curve of statistical failure" or >> similar. >> Basically, always burn in your drives for at least 1/2 a day before using >> them in a production or mission critical role. > for this and your first

Re: [PERFORM] Premature view materialization in 8.2?

2007-04-05 Thread Jonathan Ellis
On 4/5/07, Tom Lane <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: "Jonathan Ellis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I have a query hitting a view that takes 0.15s on 8.1 but 6s on 8.2.3: > ... > Is this a regression, or a "feature" of 8.2? Hard to say without EXPLAIN ANALYZE output to compare. To my eye they are id

Re: [PERFORM] High Load on Postgres 7.4.16 Server

2007-04-05 Thread Tom Lane
"John Allgood" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > ... The other configuration was RHEL3 and Postgres 7.4.13 and Redhat > Cluster Suite. The application seemed to run much faster on the older > equipment. While I agree with the other comments that you should think about moving to something newer than 7

Re: [PERFORM] SCSI vs SATA

2007-04-05 Thread david
On Fri, 6 Apr 2007, Ron wrote: Bear in mind that Google was and is notorious for pushing their environmental factors to the limit while using the cheapest "PoS" HW they can get their hands on. Let's just say I'm fairly sure every piece of HW they were using for those studies was operating outs

Re: [PERFORM] Premature view materialization in 8.2?

2007-04-05 Thread Tom Lane
"Jonathan Ellis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I have a query hitting a view that takes 0.15s on 8.1 but 6s on 8.2.3: > ... > Is this a regression, or a "feature" of 8.2? Hard to say without EXPLAIN ANALYZE output to compare. regards, tom lane ---(

Re: [PERFORM] SCSI vs SATA

2007-04-05 Thread Ron
At 11:40 PM 4/5/2007, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, 5 Apr 2007, Ron wrote: At 10:07 PM 4/5/2007, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, 5 Apr 2007, Scott Marlowe wrote: > Server class drives are designed with a longer lifespan in mind. > > Server class hard drives are rated at higher temperatures

Re: [PERFORM] SCSI vs SATA

2007-04-05 Thread Greg Smith
On Thu, 5 Apr 2007, Scott Marlowe wrote: On Thu, 2007-04-05 at 14:30, James Mansion wrote: Can you cite any statistical evidence for this? Logic? OK, everyone who hasn't already needs to read the Google and CMU papers. I'll even provide links for you: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bianca/fast07.

Re: [PERFORM] SCSI vs SATA

2007-04-05 Thread Richard Troy
On Thu, 5 Apr 2007 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > On Thu, 5 Apr 2007, Ron wrote: > > At 10:07 PM 4/5/2007, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > >> On Thu, 5 Apr 2007, Scott Marlowe wrote: > >> > >> > Server class drives are designed with a longer lifespan in mind. > >> > > >> > Server class hard drives are rate

Re: [PERFORM] a question about Direct I/O and double buffering

2007-04-05 Thread david
On Thu, 5 Apr 2007, Erik Jones wrote: On Apr 5, 2007, at 3:33 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, 5 Apr 2007, Xiaoning Ding wrote: > > > > To the best of my knowledge, Postgres itself does not have a direct IO > > option (although it would be a good addition). So, in order to use > > d

Re: [PERFORM] SCSI vs SATA

2007-04-05 Thread david
On Thu, 5 Apr 2007, Ron wrote: At 10:07 PM 4/5/2007, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, 5 Apr 2007, Scott Marlowe wrote: > Server class drives are designed with a longer lifespan in mind. > > Server class hard drives are rated at higher temperatures than desktop > drives. these two I question

Re: [PERFORM] SCSI vs SATA

2007-04-05 Thread Ron
At 10:07 PM 4/5/2007, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, 5 Apr 2007, Scott Marlowe wrote: Server class drives are designed with a longer lifespan in mind. Server class hard drives are rated at higher temperatures than desktop drives. these two I question. David Lang Both statements are the li

Re: [PERFORM] SCSI vs SATA

2007-04-05 Thread david
On Thu, 5 Apr 2007, Scott Marlowe wrote: On Thu, 2007-04-05 at 14:30, James Mansion wrote: Server drives are generally more tolerant of higher temperatures. I.e. the failure rate for consumer and server class HDs may be about the same at 40 degrees C, but by the time the internal case temps ge

Re: [PERFORM] a question about Direct I/O and double buffering

2007-04-05 Thread david
On Thu, 5 Apr 2007, Xiaoning Ding wrote: > Xiaoning > Looks like it. I just did a cursory search of the archives and it seems > that others have looked at this before so you'll probably want to start > there if your up to it. > Linux used to have (still does?) a RAW interface which might

Re: [PERFORM] Weird performance drop

2007-04-05 Thread Vincenzo Romano
On Friday 30 March 2007 16:34 Dave Dutcher wrote: > > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of > > Vincenzo Romano > > > > Is there any "workaround"? > > > > In my opinion the later the query planner decisions are taken the more > > effective they can be. > > It could be a

Re: [PERFORM] a question about Direct I/O and double buffering

2007-04-05 Thread Erik Jones
On Apr 5, 2007, at 3:33 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, 5 Apr 2007, Xiaoning Ding wrote: To the best of my knowledge, Postgres itself does not have a direct IO option (although it would be a good addition). So, in order to use direct IO with postgres you'll need to consult your

Re: [PERFORM] SCSI vs SATA

2007-04-05 Thread Scott Marlowe
On Thu, 2007-04-05 at 14:30, James Mansion wrote: > >Server drives are generally more tolerant of higher temperatures. I.e. > >the failure rate for consumer and server class HDs may be about the same > >at 40 degrees C, but by the time the internal case temps get up to 60-70 > >degrees C, the cons

Re: [PERFORM] a question about Direct I/O and double buffering

2007-04-05 Thread Alex Deucher
On 4/5/07, Xiaoning Ding <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Alex Deucher wrote: > On 4/5/07, Erik Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >> On Apr 5, 2007, at 1:22 PM, Xiaoning Ding wrote: >> >> Erik Jones wrote: >> On Apr 5, 2007, at 12:09 PM, Xiaoning Ding wrote: >> Hi, >> >> A page may be double buffered

Re: [PERFORM] a question about Direct I/O and double buffering

2007-04-05 Thread Xiaoning Ding
Alex Deucher wrote: On 4/5/07, Erik Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Apr 5, 2007, at 1:22 PM, Xiaoning Ding wrote: Erik Jones wrote: On Apr 5, 2007, at 12:09 PM, Xiaoning Ding wrote: Hi, A page may be double buffered in PG's buffer pool and in OS's buffer cache. Other DBMS like DB2 and Or

Re: [PERFORM] a question about Direct I/O and double buffering

2007-04-05 Thread david
On Thu, 5 Apr 2007, Xiaoning Ding wrote: To the best of my knowledge, Postgres itself does not have a direct IO option (although it would be a good addition). So, in order to use direct IO with postgres you'll need to consult your filesystem docs for how to set the forcedirectio mount opti

Re: [PERFORM] High Load on Postgres 7.4.16 Server

2007-04-05 Thread Dave Cramer
The problem with this is that it doesn't leverage shared buffers and kernel buffers well. Anyways, my bet is that your SAN isn't performing as you expect on the new hardware. Dave On 5-Apr-07, at 4:13 PM, John Allgood wrote: We run multiple postmasters because we can shutdown one postmaste

Re: [PERFORM] High Load on Postgres 7.4.16 Server

2007-04-05 Thread John Allgood
We run multiple postmasters because we can shutdown one postmaster/database without affecting the other postmasters/databases. Each database is a division in our company. If we had everything under one postmaster if something happened to the one the whole company would be down. -Original Messa

Re: [PERFORM] a question about Direct I/O and double buffering

2007-04-05 Thread Erik Jones
On Apr 5, 2007, at 2:56 PM, Mark Lewis wrote: ... [snipped for brevity] ... Not to hijack this thread, but has anybody here tested the behavior of PG on a file system with OS-level caching disabled via forcedirectio or by using an inherently non-caching file system such as ocfs2? I've been

Re: [PERFORM] SCSI vs SATA

2007-04-05 Thread david
On Thu, 5 Apr 2007, Ron wrote: At 11:19 AM 4/5/2007, Scott Marlowe wrote: On Thu, 2007-04-05 at 00:32, Tom Lane wrote: > "James Mansion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > Right --- the point is not the interface, but whether the drive is > > > built > > > for reliability or to hit a low p

Re: [PERFORM] SCSI vs SATA

2007-04-05 Thread david
On Thu, 5 Apr 2007, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm curious to know why you're on xfs (i've been too chicken to stray from ext3). better support for large files (although postgres does tend to try and keep the file size down by going with multiple files) and also for more files the multiple

Re: [PERFORM] High Load on Postgres 7.4.16 Server

2007-04-05 Thread Dave Cramer
On 5-Apr-07, at 3:33 PM, John Allgood wrote: The hard thing about running multiple postmasters is that you have to tune each one separate. Most of the databases I have limited the max- connections to 30-50 depending on the database. What would reasonable values for effective_cache_size and r

Re: [PERFORM] a question about Direct I/O and double buffering

2007-04-05 Thread Mark Lewis
... [snipped for brevity] ... > > > Not to hijack this thread, but has anybody here tested the behavior > > of > > PG on a file system with OS-level caching disabled via forcedirectio > > or > > by using an inherently non-caching file system such as ocfs2? > > > > > > I've been thinking about tr

Re: [PERFORM] High Load on Postgres 7.4.16 Server

2007-04-05 Thread Jeff Frost
On Thu, 5 Apr 2007, John Allgood wrote: The hard thing about running multiple postmasters is that you have to tune each one separate. Most of the databases I have limited the max-connections to 30-50 depending on the database. What would reasonable values for effective_cache_size and random_page

Re: [PERFORM] High Load on Postgres 7.4.16 Server

2007-04-05 Thread John Allgood
The hard thing about running multiple postmasters is that you have to tune each one separate. Most of the databases I have limited the max-connections to 30-50 depending on the database. What would reasonable values for effective_cache_size and random_page_cost. I think I have these default. Also

Re: [PERFORM] SCSI vs SATA

2007-04-05 Thread James Mansion
>Server drives are generally more tolerant of higher temperatures. I.e. >the failure rate for consumer and server class HDs may be about the same >at 40 degrees C, but by the time the internal case temps get up to 60-70 >degrees C, the consumer grade drives will likely be failing at a much >higher

Re: [PERFORM] High Load on Postgres 7.4.16 Server

2007-04-05 Thread C. Bergström
John Allgood wrote: Hello All I sent this message to the admin list and it never got through so I am trying the performance list. We moved our application to a new machine last night. It is a Dell PowerEdge 6950 2X Dual Core. AMD Opteron 8214 2.2Ghz. 8GB Memory. Th

Re: [PERFORM] High Load on Postgres 7.4.16 Server

2007-04-05 Thread Jeff Frost
On Thu, 5 Apr 2007, John Allgood wrote: Hello All I sent this message to the admin list and it never got through so I am trying the performance list. We moved our application to a new machine last night. It is a Dell PowerEdge 6950 2X Dual Core. AMD Opteron 8214 2.2Ghz. 8GB Memo

[PERFORM] High Load on Postgres 7.4.16 Server

2007-04-05 Thread John Allgood
Hello All I sent this message to the admin list and it never got through so I am trying the performance list. We moved our application to a new machine last night. It is a Dell PowerEdge 6950 2X Dual Core. AMD Opteron 8214 2.2Ghz. 8GB Memory. The machine is running R

Re: [PERFORM] Equivalents in PostgreSQL of MySQL's "ENGINE=MEMORY" "MAX_ROWS=1000"

2007-04-05 Thread Dimitri
Wow, it's excellent! :)) probably the next step is: ALTER TABLE CACHE ON/OFF; just to force keeping any table in the cache. What do you think?... Rgds, -Dimitri On 4/5/07, Josh Berkus wrote: Dimitri, > Probably another helpful solution may be to implement: > >ALTER TABLE LOGGING OFF

Re: [PERFORM] a question about Direct I/O and double buffering

2007-04-05 Thread Erik Jones
On Apr 5, 2007, at 1:27 PM, Mark Lewis wrote: On Thu, 2007-04-05 at 13:09 -0500, Erik Jones wrote: On Apr 5, 2007, at 12:09 PM, Xiaoning Ding wrote: Hi, A page may be double buffered in PG's buffer pool and in OS's buffer cache. Other DBMS like DB2 and Oracle has provided Direct I/O option

Re: [PERFORM] a question about Direct I/O and double buffering

2007-04-05 Thread Alex Deucher
On 4/5/07, Erik Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Apr 5, 2007, at 1:22 PM, Xiaoning Ding wrote: Erik Jones wrote: On Apr 5, 2007, at 12:09 PM, Xiaoning Ding wrote: Hi, A page may be double buffered in PG's buffer pool and in OS's buffer cache. Other DBMS like DB2 and Oracle has provided Dire

Re: [PERFORM] a question about Direct I/O and double buffering

2007-04-05 Thread Erik Jones
On Apr 5, 2007, at 1:22 PM, Xiaoning Ding wrote: Erik Jones wrote: On Apr 5, 2007, at 12:09 PM, Xiaoning Ding wrote: Hi, A page may be double buffered in PG's buffer pool and in OS's buffer cache. Other DBMS like DB2 and Oracle has provided Direct I/O option to eliminate double buffering

[PERFORM] Premature view materialization in 8.2?

2007-04-05 Thread Jonathan Ellis
I have a query hitting a view that takes 0.15s on 8.1 but 6s on 8.2.3: select party_id from clan_members_v cm, clans c where cm.clan_id = c.id and c.type = 'standard' The problem seems to be that clan_members_v contains a call to an expensive function: create or replace view clan_member

Re: [PERFORM] a question about Direct I/O and double buffering

2007-04-05 Thread Mark Lewis
Not to hijack this thread, but has anybody here tested the behavior of PG on a file system with OS-level caching disabled via forcedirectio or by using an inherently non-caching file system such as ocfs2? I've been thinking about trying this setup to avoid double-caching now that the 8.x series sc

Re: [PERFORM] a question about Direct I/O and double buffering

2007-04-05 Thread Xiaoning Ding
Erik Jones wrote: On Apr 5, 2007, at 12:09 PM, Xiaoning Ding wrote: Hi, A page may be double buffered in PG's buffer pool and in OS's buffer cache. Other DBMS like DB2 and Oracle has provided Direct I/O option to eliminate double buffering. I noticed there were discusses on the list. But I c

Re: [PERFORM] a question about Direct I/O and double buffering

2007-04-05 Thread Erik Jones
On Apr 5, 2007, at 12:09 PM, Xiaoning Ding wrote: Hi, A page may be double buffered in PG's buffer pool and in OS's buffer cache. Other DBMS like DB2 and Oracle has provided Direct I/O option to eliminate double buffering. I noticed there were discusses on the list. But I can not find simi

Re: [PERFORM] What do the adminpack functions do? (8.2.3)

2007-04-05 Thread Joshua D. Drake
Michael Dengler wrote: Hi, Ive looked through the README in the contrib/adminpack dir but it doesn't really say what these functions do and how to use them It is for use with Pgadmin. J Any help? Thanks miguel -- === The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. === Sales/

Re: [PERFORM] Equivalents in PostgreSQL of MySQL's "ENGINE=MEMORY" "MAX_ROWS=1000"

2007-04-05 Thread Josh Berkus
Dimitri, > Probably another helpful solution may be to implement: > >ALTER TABLE LOGGING OFF/ON; > > just to disable/enable WAL? Actually, a patch similar to this is currently in the queue for 8.3. -- Josh Berkus PostgreSQL @ Sun San Francisco ---(end of broadcast

[PERFORM] What do the adminpack functions do? (8.2.3)

2007-04-05 Thread Michael Dengler
Hi, Ive looked through the README in the contrib/adminpack dir but it doesn't really say what these functions do and how to use them Any help? Thanks miguel

[PERFORM] a question about Direct I/O and double buffering

2007-04-05 Thread Xiaoning Ding
Hi, A page may be double buffered in PG's buffer pool and in OS's buffer cache. Other DBMS like DB2 and Oracle has provided Direct I/O option to eliminate double buffering. I noticed there were discusses on the list. But I can not find similar option in PG. Does PG support direct I/O now? The tu

Re: [PERFORM] SCSI vs SATA

2007-04-05 Thread Arjen van der Meijden
On 5-4-2007 17:58 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Apr 5, 2007, at 4:09 AM, Ron wrote: BE VERY WARY OF USING AN ADAPTEC RAID CONTROLLER! Thanks - I received similar private emails with the same advice. I will change the controller to a LSI MegaRAID SAS 8408E -- any feedback on this one? We ha

Re: [PERFORM] SCSI vs SATA

2007-04-05 Thread Ron
At 11:19 AM 4/5/2007, Scott Marlowe wrote: On Thu, 2007-04-05 at 00:32, Tom Lane wrote: > "James Mansion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > >> Right --- the point is not the interface, but whether the drive is built > >> for reliability or to hit a low price point. > > > Personally I take the marketi

Re: [PERFORM] SCSI vs SATA

2007-04-05 Thread Alex Deucher
On 4/5/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Apr 5, 2007, at 4:09 AM, Ron wrote: > BE VERY WARY OF USING AN ADAPTEC RAID CONTROLLER! Thanks - I received similar private emails with the same advice. I will change the controller to a LSI MegaRAID SAS 8408E -- any feedback on this o

Re: [PERFORM] SCSI vs SATA

2007-04-05 Thread Joshua D. Drake
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Apr 5, 2007, at 4:09 AM, Ron wrote: BE VERY WARY OF USING AN ADAPTEC RAID CONTROLLER! Thanks - I received similar private emails with the same advice. I will change the controller to a LSI MegaRAID SAS 8408E -- any feedback on this one? LSI makes a good contro

Re: [PERFORM] SCSI vs SATA

2007-04-05 Thread [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Apr 5, 2007, at 4:09 AM, Ron wrote: BE VERY WARY OF USING AN ADAPTEC RAID CONTROLLER! Thanks - I received similar private emails with the same advice. I will change the controller to a LSI MegaRAID SAS 8408E -- any feedback on this one? IME, they are usually the worst of the commod

Re: [PERFORM] SCSI vs SATA

2007-04-05 Thread [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Apr 5, 2007, at 8:21 AM, Jeff Frost wrote: I noticed this behavior on the last Areca based 8 disk Raptor system I built. Putting pg_xlog on a separate partition on the same logical volume was faster than putting it on the large volume. It was also faster to have 8xRAID10 for OS+data+pg

Re: [PERFORM] postgres 7.4 vs 8.x redux: query plans

2007-04-05 Thread Alex Deucher
Ok, well, I dropped the DB and reloaded it and now all seems to be fine and performing well. I'm not sure what was going on before. Thanks for everyone's help! Alex On 4/3/07, Alex Deucher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On 4/3/07, Tom Lane <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > "Alex Deucher" <[EMAIL PROTEC

Re: [PERFORM] SCSI vs SATA

2007-04-05 Thread Jeff Frost
On Thu, 5 Apr 2007, Scott Marlowe wrote: I've read some recent contrary advice. Specifically advising the sharing of all files (pg_xlogs, indices, etc..) on a huge raid array and letting the drives load balance by brute force. The other, at first almost counter-intuitive result was that puttin

Re: [PERFORM] SCSI vs SATA

2007-04-05 Thread Scott Marlowe
On Thu, 2007-04-05 at 00:32, Tom Lane wrote: > "James Mansion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > >> Right --- the point is not the interface, but whether the drive is built > >> for reliability or to hit a low price point. > > > Personally I take the marketing mublings about the enterprise drives > >

Re: [PERFORM] SCSI vs SATA

2007-04-05 Thread Scott Marlowe
On Wed, 2007-04-04 at 09:12, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > On Apr 3, 2007, at 6:54 PM, Geoff Tolley wrote: > > > But what's likely to make the largest difference in the OP's case > > (many inserts) is write caching, and a battery-backed cache would > > be needed for this. This will help mask wri

Re: [PERFORM] SCSI vs SATA

2007-04-05 Thread Ron
BE VERY WARY OF USING AN ADAPTEC RAID CONTROLLER! IME, they are usually the worst of the commodity RAID controllers available. I've often seen SW RAID outperform them. If you are going to use this config, Tyan's n3600M (AKA S2932) MB has a variant that comes with 8 SAS + 6 SATA II connectors.

Re: [PERFORM] SCSI vs SATA

2007-04-05 Thread Heikki Linnakangas
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In a perhaps fitting compromise, I have decide to go with a hybrid solution: 8*73GB 15k SAS drives hooked up to Adaptec 4800SAS PLUS 6*150GB SATA II drives hooked up to mobo (for now) All wrapped in a 16bay 3U server. My reasoning is that the extra SATA drives are pra

Re: [PERFORM] SCSI vs SATA

2007-04-05 Thread Arjen van der Meijden
If the 3U case has a SAS-expander in its backplane (which it probably has?) you should be able to connect all drives to the Adaptec controller, depending on the casing's exact architecture etc. That's another two advantages of SAS, you don't need a controller port for each harddisk (we have a D