Re: Quad Xeon or Quad Opteron?

Craig Ringer wrote:
> Andrzej Zawadzki wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> We're planning new production server for PostgreSQL and I'm wondering
>> which processor (or even platform) will be better: Quad Xeon or Quad
>> Opteron (for example SUN now has a new offer Sun Fire X4440 x64).
>>
>
> [snip]
>
>
>> Suggestions?
>>
>
> To get a more useful response here, you might want to include some
> information about your workload and database size, and report on your
> planned disk subsystem and RAM.
>
Disk subsystem:
Hitachi AMS200, 12x10krpm SAS drives in RAID 10 (+1 hot spare), 1GB mem
with battery
Database is ~60GB and growing ;-)
Workloads: ~94% - SELECTS
Q/sek: Avg~300 (1000 in peak)

Server:
v40z is a 4xdouble core with 16GB RAM

> Also, based on what I've seen on this list rather than personal
> experience, you might want to give more thought to your storage than to
> CPU power. The usual thrust of advice seems to be: Get a fast, battery
> backed RAID controller. "Fast" does not mean "fast sequential I/O in
> ideal conditions so marketing can print a big number on the box"; you
> need to consider random I/O too. Get lots of fast disks. Get enough RAM
> to ensure that your indexes fit in RAM if possible.
>
Yes, of course You are right: disks are very important - I know that
especially after switch to SAN.
But server is getting older ;-) - I need good warranty - I have 3 years
from SUN for example.

ps. After reading about HP: SA P800 with StorageWorks MSA70 I'm
considering buying such storage with ~20 disks.

[...]

--
Andrzej Zawadzki