[OT] Such incredible h/w (was Re: Dual Xeon + HW RAID question)

Back in the day, we got good performance from similar sized tables
using VMS, a small VAX with only 256MB RAM and narrow SCSI 1GB disks.
The RDBMS was DEC's own Rdb/VMS. A "small" mainframe (6 MIPS, 8MB
RAM) also gave good performance.

So, this old curmudgeon asks, why such beefy h/w for such small
databases.

On Sat, 2003-07-12 at 13:25, Nikolaus Dilger wrote:
> Alexandre,
>
> Since you want the fastest speed I would do the 2 data
> disks in RAID 0 (striping) not RAID 1 (mirroring).
>
> If you would care about not loosing any transactions
> you would keep all 3 disks in RAID 5.
>
> Don't know the answer to the Hyperthreading question.
> Why don't you run a test to find out?
>
> Regards,
> Nikolaus
>
> On Thu, 10 Jul 2003 14:43:25 -0300 (BRT), "alexandre
> arruda paes :: aldeia digital" wrote:
>
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > I have this machine with a 10 million records:
> > * Dual Xeon 2.0 (HyperThreading enabled), 3 7200 SCSI
> ,
> > Adaptec 2110S,
> > RAID 5 - 32k chunk size, 1 GB Ram DDR 266 ECC, RH 8.0
> -
> > 2.4.18
> >
> > The database is mirrored with contrib/dbmirror in a P4
> > 1 Gb Ram + IDE
> >
> > If a disk failure occurs, I can use the server in the
> > mirror.
> >
> > I will format the main server in this weekend and I
> > have seen in the list
> > some people that recomends a Software RAID instead HW.
> >
> > I think too remove the RAID 5 and turn a RAID 1 for
> > data in 2 HDs.
> > SO, WAL and swap in the thrid HD.
> >
> > My questions:
> >
> > 1) I will see best disk performance changing the disk
> > layout like above
> > 2) HyperThreading really improve a procces basead
> > program, like postgres

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