Re: Hardware/OS recommendations for large databases (

On 11/17/05, William Yu <wyu(at)talisys(dot)com> wrote:
>
> > No argument there. But it's pointless if you are IO bound.
>
> Why would you just accept "we're IO bound, nothing we can do"? I'd do
> everything in my power to make my app go from IO bound to CPU bound --
> whether by optimizing my code or buying more hardware. I can tell you if
> our OLTP servers were IO bound, it would run like crap. Instead of < 1
> sec, we'd be looking at 5-10 seconds per "user transaction" and our
> users would be screaming bloody murder.
>
> In theory, you can always convert your IO bound DB to CPU bound by
> stuffing more and more RAM into your server. (Or partitioning the DB
> across multiple servers.) Whether it's cost effective depends on the DB
> and how much your users are paying you -- and that's a case-by-case
> analysis. Not a global statement of "IO-bound, pointless".

We all want our systems to be CPU bound, but it's not always possible.
Remember, he is managing a 5 TB Databse. That's quite a bit different than a
100 GB or even 500 GB database.