Re: Hardware suggestions for Linux/PGSQL server

>In the last exciting episode, drew(at)xyzzy(dot)dhs(dot)org ("Andrew G. Hammond") wrote:
>> I don't know what your budget is, but there are now 10k RPM SATA 150
>> drives on the market. Their price/performance is impressive. You may
>> want to consider going with a bunch of these instead of SCSI disks
>> (more spindles vs. faster spindles). 3ware makes a hardware raid
>> card that can drive up to 12 SATA disks. I have been told by a few
>> people who have used it that the linux driver is very solid.
>
>We got a couple of those in for testing purposes; when opportunity
>presents itself, I'll have to check to see if they are any more honest
>about commits than traditional IDE drives.
>
>If they still "lie" the same way IDE drives do, it is entirely
>possible that they are NOT nearly as impressive as you presently
>imagine. It's not much good if they're "way fast" if you can't trust
>them to actually store data when they claim it is stored...

We lost data because of this very problem when a UPS didn't signal
the shut down before it ran out of juice.

Here's an excellent explanation of the problem:
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-general/2003-10/msg01343.php

This post indicates that SATA drives still have problems, but a new
ATA standard might fix things in the future:
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-general/2003-10/msg01395.php

SATA RAID is a good option for a testing server, though.

- Jeff
--

Jeff Bohmer
VisionLink, Inc.
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www.visionlink.org
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