Re: hardware for PostgreSQL

On 11/1/07, Mark Floyd <mfloyd(at)evryx(dot)com> wrote:
> Hello,
> Dell PowerEdge Energy 2950
> (2) Quad Core Intel Xeon L5320, 2x4MB Cache, 1.86Ghz, 1066Mhz FSB
> 4GB 667Mhz Dual Ranked DIMMs, Energy Smart
>
> PERC 5/i, x8 Backplane, Integrated Controller Card
>
> Hard Drive Configuration: Integrated SAS/SATA RAID1/Raid 5
>
> Hard Drive 1 (For Operating System): 36GB 10K RPM SAS 3Gbps 2.5-in
> Hot Plug HD
> Hard Drive 2 (For logs): 36GB 10K RPM SAS 3Gbps 2.5-in Hot Plug HD
>
> Hard Drives 3,4,5,6 (In a RAID 5 Configuration): (4) 146GB 10K SAS
> 3Gbps Hard Drive, 2-5 inch, Hot Plug

If you can fit 8 drives in it, for the love of god add two more and
mirror your OS and xlog drives ( I assume that's what you mean by
drive 2 for logs). Running a server on non-redundant drives is not
the best way to do things.

And if you can live on ~ 300 Gigs of storage instead of 450 Gigs, look
into RAID-10 for your data array. RAID 10 is noticeably faster than
RAID-5 for any database that sees a fair bit of writing activity.

> It's overkill for our initial system but we are shooting for a system
> that allows for growth. If someone can let us know if we're on the
> right path or are shooting ourselves in the foot with this setup I'd
> appreciate it.

Other than the 8 cores, it's not really overkill. And depending on
your usage patterns 8 cores may well not be overkill too.