Re: Server Hardware Configuration

On Mon, Nov 21, 2005 at 09:41:36AM -0500, Michael D. Sofka wrote:
> >I suggest looking at your current bottleneck first.
> >It's likely to be the most cost-efficient route out.
>
> I/O is our bottleneck. The machine is not CPU loaded. And, in fact,
> our current performance is good. The machine upgrade is planned with a
> service upgrade. Current hardware is old, and so getting more expensive
> to support. We also anticipate service growth (read, more spam), and
> so are planning accordingly.

Which, as I mentioned, is why RAID5 is not a good solution if you're
doing any writes at all.

You're talking about a 16G database that you expect to grow to 64G. That
would fit happily in a RAID1 (mirror) of two SCSI 72G drives. I haven't
priced that kind of stuff out recently, but I believe you're looking at
$300-$500. If that doesn't provide enough performance, go to a RAID10
and add more drives. If you're doing much writing at all, spring for a
battery-backed controller so you can enable write caching.
--
Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant jnasby(at)pervasive(dot)com
Pervasive Software http://pervasive.com work: 512-231-6117
vcard: http://jim.nasby.net/pervasive.vcf cell: 512-569-9461