Re: 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 #(at)$! 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

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