Re: Filesystems WAS: Perfomance Tuning

On Tue, 12 Aug 2003 13:09:42 -0700 Josh Berkus <josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com> wrote:
> This idea has been discussed numerous times on the HACKERS list, and is
> a
> (pretty much) closed issue. While Oracle and SQL Server use their own
> filesystems, PostgreSQL will not because:
...
> 2) The filesystem projects out there are (mostly) well-staffed and are
> constantly advancing using specialized technology and theory. There's
> no way
> that the PostgreSQL team can do a better job in our "spare time".

i consider this a fair answer, but i have a slightly different question to
ask, inspired by my discussions with a good friend who is a top notch
Informix DBA.

there are advantages to being able to split the database across a slew of
disk drives. if we accept the notion of using the native OS filesystem on
each, it would seem that being able to direct various tables and indices to
specific drives might be a valuble capability. i know that i could go into
/var/lib/pgsql/data/base and fan the contents out, but this is unweildy and
impractical. has any consideration been given to providing a way to manage
such a deployment?

or is it the judgement of the hackers community that a monsterous raid-10
array offers comparable performance?

i forget how large the data store on my friend's current project is, but
i'll check. knowing the size and transaction rate he's dealing with might
put a finer point on this discussion.

richard
--
Richard Welty rwelty(at)averillpark(dot)net
Averill Park Networking 518-573-7592
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