Re: [pgsql-jobs] Looking for database hosting

On 8/19/07, Luke Lonergan <LLonergan(at)greenplum(dot)com> wrote:
>
> Andrew,
>
> I'd say that commodity systems are the fastest with postgres - many have
> seen big slowdowns with high end servers. 'Several orders of magnitude' is
> not possible by just changing the HW,
>

Going from one or two SATA disks to a SAN farm ought to achieve orders of
magnitude in improvement. And cost. Going from 2GB of memory up to 16 or
32GB can make significant changes as well. However I agree with you that
intelligence at the application layer such that you can take advantage of a
parallel approach is a superior solution both in terms of overall
effectiveness and cost effectiveness.

you've got a SW problem to solve first. We have done 100+ times faster than
> both Postgres and popular (even gridded) commercial DBMS using an
> intrinsically parallel SW approach.
>

That is both cool and unsurprising at the same time. One of the major
challenges I've seen in practice is that small companies don't generally
start off with a db design that's capable of a parallel approach. With
success and growth, there comes a point where a massive re-design is needed.
Companies that recognize this, make the investment and take the risk are
rare.

If the objective is OLAP / DSS there's no substitute for a parallel DB that
> does query and load / transform using all the CPUs and IO channels
> simultaneously. This role is best met from a value standpoint by clustering
> commodity systems.
>
> For OLTP, we need better SMP and DML algorithmic optimizations for
> concurrency, at which point big SMP machines work. Right now you can buy a
> 32 CPU commodity (opteron) machine from SUN (X4600) for about $60K loaded.
>

WRT hosting, we've done a bit of it on GPDB systems, but we're not making it
> a focus area. Instead, we do subscription pricing by the amount of data
> used and recommend / help get systems set up.
>
> - Luke
>
> Msg is shrt cuz m on ma treo
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andrew Hammond [mailto:andrew(dot)george(dot)hammond(at)gmail(dot)com<andrew(dot)george(dot)hammond(at)gmail(dot)com>
> ]
> Sent: Sunday, August 19, 2007 03:49 PM Eastern Standard Time
> To: Niklas Saers
> Cc: pgsql-jobs(at)postgresql(dot)org; pgsql-performance(at)postgresql(dot)org
> Subject: Re: [PERFORM] [pgsql-jobs] Looking for database hosting
>
> Nik, you may be underestimating just how much performance can be obtained
> from a single database server. For example, an IBM p595 server connected
> to
> an array of ds8300 storage devices could reasonably be expected to provide
> several orders of magnitude more performance when compared to commodity
> hardware. In commodity space (albeit, just barely), a 16 core opteron
> running (the admittedly yet-to-be-released) FreeBSD 7, and a suitably
> provisioned SAN should also enormously outperform a beige-box solution,
> and
> at a fraction of the cost. If it's performance you care about then the
> pgsql-performance list (which I have cc'd) is the place to talk about it.
>
> I realize this doesn't address your desire to get out of database server
> administration. I am not aware of any company which provides database
> hosting, further I'm not entirely convinced that's a viable business
> solution. The technical issues (security, latency and reliability are the
> ones that immediately come to mind) associated with a hosted database
> server
> solution suggest to me that this would not be economically viable. The
> business issues around out-sourcing a critical, if not central component
> of
> your architecture seem, at least to me, to be insurmountable.
>
> Andrew
>
>
> On 8/19/07, Niklas Saers <niklassaers(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> > the company I'm doing work for is expecting a 20 times increase in
> > data and seeks a 10 times increase in performance. Having pushed our
> > database server to the limit daily for the past few months we have
> > decided we'd prefer to be database users rather than database server
> > admins. :-)
> >
> > Are you or can you recommend a database hosting company that is good
> > for clients that require more power than what a single database
> > server can offer?
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> > Nik
> >
> > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> > TIP 9: In versions below 8.0, the planner will ignore your desire to
> > choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not
> > match
> >
>
>