Re: Reliability recommendations

Christopher Browne wrote:
> After takin a swig o' Arrakan spice grog, jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com ("Joshua D. Drake") belched out:
> > Jeremy Haile wrote:
> >> We are a small company looking to put together the most cost effective
> >> solution for our production database environment. Currently in
> >> production Postgres 8.1 is running on this machine:
> >>
> >> Dell 2850
> >> 2 x 3.0 Ghz Xeon 800Mhz FSB 2MB Cache
> >> 4 GB DDR2 400 Mhz
> >> 2 x 73 GB 10K SCSI RAID 1 (for xlog and OS)
> >> 4 x 146 GB 10K SCSI RAID 10 (for postgres data)
> >> Perc4ei controller
> >>
> >> The above is a standard Dell box with nothing added or modified beyond
> >> the options available directly through Dell.
>
> > You should probably review the archives for PostgreSQL user
> > experience with Dell's before you purchase one.
>
> Hear, hear! We found Dell servers were big-time underperformers.
>
> Generic hardware put together with generally the same brand names of
> components (e.g. - for SCSI controllers and such) would generally play
> much better.
>
> For the cheapo desktop boxes they obviously have to buy the "cheapest
> hardware available this week;" it sure seems as though they engage in
> the same sort of thing with the "server class" hardware.
>
> I don't think anyone has been able to forcibly point out any
> completely precise shortcoming; just that they underperform what the
> specs suggest they ought to be able to provide.

Dell often says part X is included, but part X is not the exact same as
part X sold by the original manufacturer. To hit a specific price
point, Dell is willing to strip thing out of commodity hardware, and
often does so even when performance suffers. For many people, this is
unacceptable.

--
Bruce Momjian http://candle.pha.pa.us
SRA OSS, Inc. http://www.sraoss.com

+ If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +