Re: best OS and HW for postgreSQL

Scott Marlowe wrote:
> On Sun, 2006-09-24 at 20:18 -0400, Jim Nasby wrote:
>> On Sep 22, 2006, at 6:12 PM, Raul Retamozo wrote:
>>> Hi everyone on the list. I want to know what is the reccommended OS
>>> to work with PostgreSQL , on specific with PostGIS:
>>> One more question is about what HW (server) offers the best
>>> performance for a Web Map Server bases on PostGIS and mapserver.
>> In general, you're probably best off running whatever OS you're most
>> comfortable with.
>
> I'd amend that to say whatever flavor of unix you're most comfortable
> with.

Well honestly that isn't true either. Linux is faster then Solaris for
PostgreSQL in a lot of cases. In reality... I would say the best OS for
PostgreSQL is either Linux or FreeBSD. Win32 is great for a small
installation or development.

The Solaris argument may change for 8.2, I don't know.

> Many tools aren't quite there on the windows version, and it
> still seems to have more issues with performance and scaling than the
> unix flavors of PostgreSQL.

No question. The win32 version of PostgreSQL can't go over 300-400
connections depending on the size of your machine without modifying your
registry in a scary fashion.

>
>> As for hardware, until recently, AMD was the un-disputed king when it
>> came to running PostgreSQL (and databases in general). But the newer
>> Intel CPUs seem to have surpassed the Opteron. I believe there's a
>> tweakers.net article floating around that did some performance
>> testing with the new CPUs.

I am still curious about this when you start talking more then say 4
CPUs. AMD IIRC still has the belt for things like memory bandwidth.

>
> I think AMD still has an advantage for CPU >=4 due to the hypertransport
> (not cores, actual CPU sockets >=4) Since most loads are easily handled
> by two dual core CPUs nowadays, AMD and Intel are about even.

Heh, see above ;)

>
> Much more important is your disk subsystem. Using an Areca RAID
> controller with battery backed cache and a half dozen or more hard
> drives is often the real winner for performance.

Yes, LSI and 3Ware are also good. I am particularly fond of LSI but
Areca has PCI-Express cards which means you can put them on cheaper
motherboards :)

Joshua D. Drake

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