Re: SAN vs Internal Disks

On 9/6/07, Harsh Azad <harsh(dot)azad(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> Thanks Scott, we have now requested IBM/EMC to provide test machines.
> Interestingly since you mentioned the importance of Raid controllers and the
> drivers; we are planning to use Cent OS 5 for hosting the DB.

What RAID controllers have you looked at. Seems the two most popular
in terms of performance here have been Areca and 3Ware / Escalade.
LSI seems to come in a pretty close third. Adaptec is to be avoided
as are cheap RAID controllers (i.e. promise etc...) battery backed
cache is a must, and the bigger the better.

> Firstly, I could only find postgres 8.1.x RPM for CentOS 5, could not find
> any RPM for 8.2.4. Is there any 8.2.4 RPM for CentOS 5?
>
> Secondly, would investing into Redhat enterprise edition give any
> performance advantage? I know all the SAN boxes are only certified on RHEL
> and not CentOS. Or since CentOS is similar to RHEL it would be fine?

for all intents and purposes, CentOS and RHEL are the same OS, so any
pgsql rpm for one should pretty much work for the other. At the
worst, you might have to get a srpm and rebuild it for CentOS / White
Box.