Re: Slow updates, poor IO

On Sat, Sep 27, 2008 at 4:33 PM, John Huttley <John(at)mib-infotech(dot)co(dot)nz> wrote:
>
> > > this is part of the trade-offs of MVCC.
>
> > was... was a part of the trade-offs.
>
> You are thinking of HOT?
> I don't think it applies in the case of full table updates??

Sure, you just need a table with plenty of empty space in it, either
from vacuumed previous deletes / inserts or with a low fill factor
like 50%.

> It's really an effect of parallel updates / writes / accesses, and is
> always an issue for a database running on a poor storage subsystem. A
> db with a two drive mirror set is always going to be at a disadvantage
> to one running on a dozen or so drives in a RAID-10
>
> Oh well, I'm forever going to be disadvantaged.

Why? A decent caching raid controller and a set of 4 to 8 SATA drives
can make a world of difference and the cost is not that high for the
gain in performance. Even going to 4 drives in a software RAID-10 can
make a lot of difference in these situations, and that can be done
with spare machines and hard drives.