Purchasing the correct hardware: dual-core intel? Big cache?

[Martin Hepworth]

Bill

depends on the application itself, but more RAM and the disk layout (RAID)
will be more important than the CPU. Also depends on how write-heavy the
apps are...

--
martin

On 4/24/06, Bill Moran <wmoran at potentialtech.com> wrote:
>
>
> I've been asked to make some hardware recommendations, I'm hoping some
> folks on the list can make some suggestions.
>
> We're looking hard at getting either Intel dual-core procs, or getting
> hyperthreaded procs with huge (8M) caches.
>
> We currently have a few dual proc Intel HT machines that we can test
> out our workload on, and I'm trying to get a feel for how to determine
> if a larger cache size will generate better performance than replacing
> HT procs with full-blown dual-core procs.  We're looking at the 6850
> from Dell, which supports both processor families:
>
> http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/pedge_6850?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz
>
> The goal for these machines is to serve out PosgreSQL databases to as
> many Apache+php front ends as we can hang off each one.  So we're trying
> to purchase hardware that will create a DB server that can handle a lot
> of web server front ends.
>
> I have a Dell 2850 (dual HT procs) here that I can use for testing.
> I'm a little fuzzy on determining how well the cache is working, so I'm
> stuck on whether or not the 8M cache that's available on the HT units
> is worth the money or not.  Can anyone suggest a testing methodology
> that will isolate this particular aspect?
>
> --
> Bill Moran
> Collaborative Fusion Inc.
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