Running large DB's on FreeBSD

[Bill Moran]

Mike Jakubik <mikej at rogers.com> wrote:
> 
>     I am in the process of implementing a fairly large mysql server for 
> an even larger company, and naturally i want to use FreeBSD. The 
> hardware will be an HP DL385, 2 x dual-core Opterons, 16GB RAM,  7 x 15k 
> rpm disks in a RAID5 setup.

Generally speaking, RAID 5 is known for lousy performance in database
loads.  Consider using RAID 10.

>     So, first of all, am i crazy for choosing fbsd+mysql for this rather 
> than something like Solaris + Oracle? :)

Well, you should be using FreeBSD+PostgreSQL, but that's just my religion.

> Secondly, i am just looking for 
> some suggestions, opinions, success/failure story's that may help me 
> out. Is anyone out there using FreeBSD for something of this size? I am 
> hoping that everything will work out well, and the client will be happy. 
> This would generate some good PR for FreeBSD, as it is a very large 
> international company and it would be the first FreeBSD server (that i 
> know of) of this type there.

Yes, this is being done.  I would suggest surfing the Postgresql
performance mailing list archives a bit.  There are often discussions of
huge databases there:
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-performance/

-- 
Bill Moran

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