Suggestion for a very fast postgresql machine?

[pete wright]

On 5/29/06, Palle Girgensohn <girgen at freebsd.org> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Do you have any suggestions for building a really fast machine with the
> sole purpose of running postgresql for a multi user application? The
> database currently has a 11 GB footprint on the disk.
>
> I'm thinking in terms of at least four CPU:s, 12 GB RAM. Hardware is mostly
> a matter of money, I guess, and disks are probably the bottleneck, right?
> We are currently a FreeBSD only shop, we have very good knowledge about
> that system, and no experience with Linux. Still, is FreeBSD 6.1 a good
> choice, or will a Linux distribution outperform for 4+ SMP? I won't have
> much time to experiment, unfortunately, but I'd love some pointers or tips.

it really depends on they type of load you will be putting Postgres
through.  Alot of read only query's, transactions...how many
connections at a time hitting it.  etc.  you should really figure out
the answers to these questions before spending money on hardware.

generally speaking, disk I/O will be an important bottleneck to
consider.  If at all possible I would use SCSI or Fiber storage
devices in a RAID'd configuration (preferably from a hardware RAID
controller with ample cache and a BBU).

seriously though, let us know the load profile you expect on this DB
then maybe we can give you useful info...

-p

-- 
~~o0OO0o~~
Pete Wright
www.nycbug.org
NYC's *BSD User Group