Re: Postgresql on windows / solid state

Machiel,

There is quite a bit of information available on the net on the use of solid
state within databases in general as well as specific to PostgreSQL. It is
worth reading about it in full (I recommend
https://www.packtpub.com/postgresql-9-0-high-performance/book for some good
information on it). In summary though you need to spend a lot of money on
solid state drives in order for them to be safe for databases due to write
back cache - the more expensive ones will have battery backup cache to
protect your WAL in the event of a power cut. Write through cache isn't
generally viable for solid state due to the way the technology works. It
usually isn't cost effective to use solid state compared to getting good SAS
disks.

I can't really comment much on using PostgreSQL on Windows other than to say
that PostgreSQL defers a lot of its functionality onto the OS such as
backups, WAL archving and to a certain extent block caching. Therefore a
good OS is more important than on other databases and I imagine that using
Linux would make the life of the DBA much happier.

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On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 8:26 AM, Machiel Richards <machielr(at)rdc(dot)co(dot)za>wrote:

Secondly, is it viable or worth it to look at Solid State drive as storage
method instead of 15k sas disks for instance? What is the performance
difference in this regard.