Re: choosing the right platform

Matthew,

> Currently I'm most experienced in Linux, especially RedHat. I'm
> "certified" on SCO Openserver (5.x) and I've played with Irix, OSF/1 (I
> don't think it's called that anymore), Free BSD (3.x) and Solaris (2.x).
> I'm most
> comfortable with Linux, but I'm willing to use a different platform if it
> will be beneficial. I've heard that Solaris on the Sparc platform is
> capable of addressing larger amounts of RAM than Linux on Intel does. I
> don't know if that's true or if that has bearing, but I'd like to hear your
> opinions.

Please browse through the list archives. We have numerous posts on the
platform subject. In fact, several of us are trying to put together a
PostgreSQL performance test package to answer this question difinitively
rather than anecdotally.

Anecdotal responses are:

Solaris is *bad* for PostgreSQL, due to a high per-process overhead.
Universal opinion on this list has been that Solaris is optimized for
multi-threaded applications, not multi-process applications, and postgres is
the latter.

*BSD has a *lot* of fans on the PGSQL lists, many of whom claim significantly
better performance than Linux, mostly due to better filesystem I/O.

Linux is used heavily by a lot of PostgreSQL users. I have yet to see anyone
provide actual Linux vs. BSD statistics, though ... something we hope to do.

Nobody has come forward and reported on PostgreSQL on SCO Unix.

Irix is widely regarded as a "dead" platform, though PostgreSQL does run on it
...

Good luck, and keep watching this space!

--
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco