Re: Hosted servers with good DB disk performance?

On 5/26/09 6:52 PM, "Scott Marlowe" <scott(dot)marlowe(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:

> On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 7:41 PM, Scott Carey <scott(at)richrelevance(dot)com> wrote:
>>
>> On 5/26/09 6:17 PM, "Greg Smith" <gsmith(at)gregsmith(dot)com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, 26 May 2009, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>>>
>>>> CMD doesn't rent hardware you would have to provide that, Rack Space
>>>> does.
>>>
>>> Part of the idea was to avoid buying a stack of servers, if this were just
>>> a "where do I put the boxes at?" problem I'd have just asked you about it
>>> already.  I forgot to check Rack Space earlier, looks like they have Dell
>>> servers with up to 8 drives and a RAID controller in them available.
>>> Let's just hope it's not one of the completely useless PERC models there;
>>> can anyone confirm Dell's PowerEdge R900 has one of the decent performing
>>> PERC6 controllers I've heard rumors of in it?
>>
>> Every managed hosting provider I've seen uses RAID controllers and support
>> through the hardware provider.  If its Dell its 99% likely a PERC (OEM'd
>> LSI).
>> HP, theirs (not sure who the OEM is), Sun theirs (OEM'd Adaptec).
>>
>> PERC6 in my testing was certainly better than PERC5, but its still sub-par
>> in sequential transfer rate or scaling up past 6 or so drives in a volume.
>>
>> I did go through the process of using a managed hosting provider and getting
>> custom RAID card and storage arrays -- but that takes a lot of hand-holding
>> and time, and will most certainly cause setup delays and service issues when
>> things go wrong and you've got the black-sheep server.  Unless its
>> absolutely business critical to get that last 10%-20% performance, I would
>> go with whatever they have with no customization.
>>
>> Most likely if you ask for a database setup, they'll give you 6 or 8 drives
>> in raid-5.  Most of what these guys do is set up LAMP cookie-cutters...
>>
>>>
>>> Craig, I share your concerns about outsourced hosting, but as the only
>>> custom application involved is one I build my own RPMs for I'm not really
>>> concerned about the system getting screwed up software-wise.  The idea
>>> here is that I might rent an eval system to confirm performance is
>>> reasonable, and if it is then I'd be clear to get a bigger stack of them.
>>> Luckily there's a guy here who knows a bit about benchmarking for this
>>> sort of thing...
>
> Yeah, the OP would be much better served ordering a server with an
> Areca or Escalade / 3ware controller setup and ready to go, shipped to
> the hosting center and sshing in and doing the rest than letting a
> hosted solution company try to compete. You can get a nice 16x15K SAS
> disk machine with an Areca controller, dual QC cpus, and 16 to 32 gig
> ram for $6000 to $8000 ready to go. We've since repurposed our Dell /
> PERC machines as file servers and left the real database server work
> to our aberdeen machines. Trying to wring reasonable performance out
> of most Dell servers is a testament to frustration.
>

For a permanent server, yes. But for a sort lease? You have to go with
what is easily available for lease, or work out something with a provider
where they buy the HW from you and manage/lease it back (some do this, but
all I've ever heard of involved 12+ servers to do so and sign on for 1 or 2
years).

Expecting full I/O performance out of a DELL with a PERC is not really
possible, but maybe that's not as important as a certain pricing model or
the flexibility? That is really an independent business decision.

I'll also but a caveat to the '3ware' above -- the last few I've used were
slower than the PERC (9650 series versus PERC6, 9550 versus PERC5 -- all
tests with 12 SATA drives raid 10).
I have no experience with the 3ware 9690 series (SAS) though -- those might
be just fine.