Re: Re: Moving a live production database to different server and postgres release

Ulas Albayrak wrote:
> Unfortunately, the switch to Windows is out of my hands. If it were up
> to me I'd stick with BSD. When you say postgres on Windows is known
> for its "mediocre performance", do you mean it's slower or buggy? Or
> both?
>

Three examples that have varying proportions of slow and buggy in them:

-Without risky registry hacking, Windows systems won't allow more than
about 125 connections to the server at a time if you're using the
standard service infrastructure to manage the server. See the last
entry at
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Running_%26_Installing_PostgreSQL_On_Native_Windows
for details. If you need more clients than that connecting to the
database, you'll need to either tweak the registry, run it outside of
the services model, or put a connection pooler between the clients and
the database.

-UNIX systems normally allow giving the database up to several gigabytes
of RAM for its direct utilization. Windows installs have to be kept in
the 128MB - 512MB range because they get unexpectedly slower when the
database has more memory than that.

-Anti-virus software installed on Windows servers has to be very
carefully screened for compatibility with the database, with really
random sorts of problems popping up when you have a bad combination.
Any time you let your AV software get updated, you're potentially
exposed to the database becoming unreliable afterwards.

--
Greg Smith 2ndQuadrant US Baltimore, MD
PostgreSQL Training, Services and Support
greg(at)2ndQuadrant(dot)com www.2ndQuadrant.us