Re: scaling up postgres

> Well, pre-compiled isn't going to make much of a difference
> stability-wise. What you will run into is that very few people are
> running PostgreSQL on your hardware, so it's possible you'd run into
> some odd corner cases. I think it's pretty unlikely you'd lose data, but
> you could end up with performance-related issues.
>
> If you can, it'd be great to do some testing on that hardware to see if
> you can break PostgreSQL.

It shouldn't be too hard to snag resources for an LPAR. In fact since it was
one of the things I was looking at testing (postgres/LoP or Postgres/AIX).

I'll see what I can work out. If I can't get a CPU on the 570, we have a 520
that I should be able to use.

> This is true. In our case I couldn't get the approval for the new hardware
> > since we had two x445 boxes sitting there doing nothing (I wanted them
> for
> > our VMware environment personally). Another sticking point is finding a
> > vendor that will provide a hardware support contract similar to what we
> have
> > with our existing IBM hardware (24x7x4). Since IBM has f-all for Opteron
> > based systems and we've sworn off Dell, I was pretty limited. HP was
> able to
> > get in on a pilot program and we're considering them now for future
> hardware
> > purchases but beyond Dell/IBM/HP, there's not much else that can provide
> the
> > kind of hardware support turn-around we need.
>
> What about Sun?

Good question. At the time, Sun was off again/on again with Linux. Quite
honestly I'm not sure where Sun is headed. I actually suggested the Sun
hardware for our last project (a Windows-platformed package we needed) but
cost-wise, they were just too much compared to the HP solution. HP has a
cluster-in-a-box solution that runs about 10K depending on your VAR (2 DL380
with shared SCSI to an MSA500 - sounds like a perfect VMware solution).

> >We've been thrilled with the performance of our DB2 systems that run on
> > >> AIX/Power 5 but since the DB2 instance memory is limited to 18GB,
> we've
> > >got
> > >> two 86GB p570s sitting there being under utilized.
>
> BTW, in a past life we moved a DB2 database off of Xeons and onto
> RS/6000s with Power4. The difference was astounding.

I'm amazed myself. My last experience with AIX before this was pre Power4.
AIX 5.3 on Power 5 is a sight to behold. I'm still cursing our DBAs for not
realizing the 18GB instance memory thing though ;)

--
> 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
>

--
John E. Vincent
lusis(dot)org(at)gmail(dot)com