From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jun 3 15:40:11 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A5CD116A4CE for ; Thu, 3 Jun 2004 15:40:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smtpout.mac.com (smtpout.mac.com [17.250.248.47]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6971A43D1D for ; Thu, 3 Jun 2004 15:40:11 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from cswiger@mac.com) Received: from mac.com (smtpin07-en2 [10.13.10.152]) by smtpout.mac.com (8.12.6/MantshX 2.0) with ESMTP id i53Me9si018352; Thu, 3 Jun 2004 15:40:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [10.1.1.193] (nfw2.codefab.com [199.103.21.225] (may be forged)) (authenticated bits=0)i53Me8wb010023; Thu, 3 Jun 2004 15:40:08 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <20040603214253.GA93387@kenjim.com> References: <20040603214253.GA93387@kenjim.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v618) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Message-Id: Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Charles Swiger Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2004 18:40:07 -0400 To: Kenji M X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.618) cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Running FreeBSD/PostgreSQL on high-end dual Xeon box X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 03 Jun 2004 22:40:11 -0000 On Jun 3, 2004, at 5:42 PM, Kenji M wrote: > I am currently specing a 2U dual Xeon server and hope to use > RAID 0+1 capability. The question is for PostgreSQL admins... > > 1) Which RAID controller should we use? You haven't mentioned whether you plan to use SCSI or IDE drives. The PERC RAID controller in Dell's PowerEdge's works quite well for the former, but you might consider the 3ware twe if you're doing IDE. > 2) Considering Q1, does it not even make sense to use > FreeBSD+PostgreSQL > and bite the bullet and go with Linux (assuming it has better hw RAID > support) and run PostgreSQL on that using a fancier journaling > filesystem. Hmm. What makes you think that a journalling filesystem gains you much when you are running a database? Databases do their own transaction management using two-phase commit and logfiles for rollback in case of a crash using a few very large files, which they'll write to directly using async/directIO (whatever the term you wish to use is), rather than using OS/filesystem buffering.... -- -Chuck