Re: [PERFORM] Hardware upgraded but performance still ain't good
> > First off - very few third party tools support debian. Debian is > a > > sure fire way to have an unsupported system. Use RedHat or SuSe > > (flame me all you want, it doesn't make it less true). > > *cough* BS *cough* > > Linux is Linux. It doesn't matter what trademark you put on top of > it. > As long as they are running a current version of Linux (e.g; kernel > 2.6) they should be fine. Unfortunatly, that' not my experience either. Both RedHat and SuSE heavily modify the kernel. So anything that needs anything near kernel space (two examples: the HP management/monitoring tools and the EMC/Legato Networker backup software) simply does not work on Linux (linux being the kernel from kernel.org). They only work on RedHat/SuSE. To the point of not compiling/starting/working, not just the support part. (One could argue that they shouldn't claim linux support then, but specifically RH/SuSE, but I don't expect them to do that..) BTW, it used to work much better with 2.4, but since there is no real "stable series" kernel in 2.6, it's just a lost cause there it seems. //Magnus ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend
Re: [PERFORM] Postgresql Performance on an HP DL385 and
> There is 64MB on the 6i and 192MB on the 642 controller. I wish the > controllers had a "wrieback" enable option like the LSI MegaRAID > adapters have. I have tried splitting the cache accelerator 25/75 > 75/25 0/100 100/0 but the results really did not improve. They have a writeback option, but you can't enable it unless you buy the battery-pack for the controller. I believe it's enabled by default once you get the BBWC. //Magnus ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend
Re: [PERFORM] Hardware upgraded but performance still ain't good
On 8/18/06, Magnus Hagander <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > First off - very few third party tools support debian. Debian is > a > > sure fire way to have an unsupported system. Use RedHat or SuSe > > (flame me all you want, it doesn't make it less true). > > *cough* BS *cough* > > Linux is Linux. It doesn't matter what trademark you put on top of > it. > As long as they are running a current version of Linux (e.g; kernel > 2.6) they should be fine. Unfortunatly, that' not my experience either. Both RedHat and SuSE heavily modify the kernel. So anything that needs anything near kernel space (two examples: the HP management/monitoring tools and the EMC/Legato Networker backup software) simply does not work on Linux (linux being the kernel from kernel.org). They only work on RedHat/SuSE. To the point of not compiling/starting/working, not just the support part. (One could argue that they shouldn't claim linux support then, but specifically RH/SuSE, but I don't expect them to do that..) BTW, it used to work much better with 2.4, but since there is no real "stable series" kernel in 2.6, it's just a lost cause there it seems. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 9: In versions below 8.0, the planner will ignore your desire to choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not match
Re: [PERFORM] Postgresql Performance on an HP DL385 and
Steve, If this is an internal RAID1 on two disks, it looks great. Based on the random seeks though (578 seeks/sec), it looks like maybe it's 6 disks in a RAID10? - Luke On 8/16/06 7:10 PM, "Steve Poe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Everyone, > > I wanted to follow-up on bonnie results for the internal RAID1 which is > connected to the SmartArray 6i. I believe this is the problem, but I am > not good at interepting the results. Here's an sample of three runs: > > scsi disc > array ,16G,47983,67,65492,20,37214,6,73785,87,89787,6,578.2,0,16,+, > +++,+,+++,+,+++,+,+++,+,+++,+,+++ > scsi disc > array ,16G,54634,75,67793,21,36835,6,74190,88,89314,6,579.9,0,16,+, > +++,+,+++,+,+++,+,+++,+,+++,+,+++ > scsi disc > array ,16G,55056,76,66108,20,36859,6,74108,87,89559,6,585.0,0,16,+, > +++,+,+++,+,+++,+,+++,+ > > This was run on the internal RAID1 on the outer portion of the discs > formatted at ext2. > > Thanks. > > Steve > > On Thu, 2006-08-10 at 10:35 -0500, Scott Marlowe wrote: >> On Thu, 2006-08-10 at 10:15, Luke Lonergan wrote: >>> Mike, >>> >>> On 8/10/06 4:09 AM, "Michael Stone" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>> On Wed, Aug 09, 2006 at 08:29:13PM -0700, Steve Poe wrote: > I tried as you suggested and my performance dropped by 50%. I went from > a 32 TPS to 16. Oh well. If you put data & xlog on the same array, put them on seperate partitions, probably formatted differently (ext2 on xlog). >>> >>> If he's doing the same thing on both systems (Sun and HP) and the HP >>> performance is dramatically worse despite using more disks and having faster >>> CPUs and more RAM, ISTM the problem isn't the configuration. >>> >>> Add to this the fact that the Sun machine is CPU bound while the HP is I/O >>> wait bound and I think the problem is the disk hardware or the driver >>> therein. >> >> I agree. The problem here looks to be the RAID controller. >> >> Steve, got access to a different RAID controller to test with? >> >> ---(end of broadcast)--- >> TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate >>subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your >>message can get through to the mailing list cleanly > > ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend
Re: [PERFORM] Postgresql Performance on an HP DL385 and
That's about what I was getting for a 2 disk RAID 0 setup on a PE 2950. Here's bonnie++ numbers for the RAID10x4 and RAID0x2, unfortunately I only have the 1.93 numbers since this was before I got the advice to run with the earlier version of bonnie and larger file sizes, so I don't know how meaningful they are. RAID 10x4 bash-2.05b$ bonnie++ -d bonnie -s 1000:8k Version 1.93c --Sequential Output-- --Sequential Input- --Random- Concurrency 1 -Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks-- MachineSize K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP 1000M 585 99 21705 4 28560 9 1004 99 812997 98 5436 454 Latency 14181us 81364us 50256us 57720us1671us 1059ms Version 1.93c --Sequential Create-- Random Create c -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP 16 4712 10 + +++ + +++ 4674 10 + +++ + +++ Latency 807ms 21us 36us 804ms 110us 36us 1.93c,1.93c, ,1,1155207445,1000M,,585,99,21705,4,28560,9,1004,99,812997,98,5436,454,1 6,4712,10,+,+++,+,+++,4674,10,+,+++,+,+++,14181us,81 364us,50256us,57720us,1671us,1059ms,807ms,21us,36us,804ms,110us,36us bash-2.05b$ RAID 0x2 bash-2.05b$ bonnie++ -d bonnie -s 1000:8k Version 1.93c --Sequential Output-- --Sequential Input- --Random- Concurrency 1 -Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks-- MachineSize K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP 1000M 575 99 131621 25 104178 26 1004 99 816928 99 6233 521 Latency 14436us 26663us 47478us 54796us1487us 38924us Version 1.93c --Sequential Create-- Random Create -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP 16 4935 10 + +++ + +++ 5198 11 + +++ + +++ Latency 738ms 32us 43us 777ms 24us 30us 1.93c,1.93c,beast.corp.lumeta.com,1,1155210203,1000M,,575,99,131621,25,1 04178,26,1004,99,816928,99,6233,521,16,4935,10,+,+++,+,+++,5 198,11,+,+++,+,+++,14436us,26663us,47478us,54796us,1487us,38924u s,738ms,32us,43us,777ms,24us,30us A RAID 5 configuration seems to outperform this on the PE 2950 though (at least in terms of raw read/write perf) If anyone's interested in some more detailed tests of the 2950, I might be able to reconfigure the raid for some tests next week before I start setting up the box for long term use, so I'm open to suggestions. See earlier posts in this thread for details about the hardware. Thanks, Bucky -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Luke Lonergan Sent: Friday, August 18, 2006 10:38 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Scott Marlowe Cc: Michael Stone; pgsql-performance@postgresql.org Subject: Re: [PERFORM] Postgresql Performance on an HP DL385 and Steve, If this is an internal RAID1 on two disks, it looks great. Based on the random seeks though (578 seeks/sec), it looks like maybe it's 6 disks in a RAID10? - Luke On 8/16/06 7:10 PM, "Steve Poe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Everyone, > > I wanted to follow-up on bonnie results for the internal RAID1 which is > connected to the SmartArray 6i. I believe this is the problem, but I am > not good at interepting the results. Here's an sample of three runs: > > scsi disc > array ,16G,47983,67,65492,20,37214,6,73785,87,89787,6,578.2,0,16,+, > +++,+,+++,+,+++,+,+++,+,+++,+,+++ > scsi disc > array ,16G,54634,75,67793,21,36835,6,74190,88,89314,6,579.9,0,16,+, > +++,+,+++,+,+++,+,+++,+,+++,+,+++ > scsi disc > array ,16G,55056,76,66108,20,36859,6,74108,87,89559,6,585.0,0,16,+, > +++,+,+++,+,+++,+,+++,+ > > This was run on the internal RAID1 on the outer portion of the discs > formatted at ext2. > > Thanks. > > Steve > > On Thu, 2006-08-10 at 10:35 -0500, Scott Marlowe wrote: >> On Thu, 2006-08-10 at 10:15, Luke Lonergan wrote: >>> Mike, >>> >>> On 8/10/06 4:09 AM, "Michael Stone" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>> On Wed, Aug 09, 2006 at 08:29:13PM -0700, Steve Poe wrote: > I tried as you suggested and my performance dropped by 50%. I went from > a 32 TPS to 16. Oh well. If you put data & xlog on the same array, put them on seperate partitions, probably formatted differently (ext2 on xlog). >>> >>> If he's doing the same thing on both systems (Sun and HP) and the HP >>> performance is dramatically worse despite using more disks and having faster >>> CPUs and more RAM, ISTM the problem isn't the configuration. >>> >>> Add to this the fact that the Sun machine is CPU bound while the HP is I/O >>> wait bound and I think the proble
Re: [PERFORM] Postgresql Performance on an HP DL385 and
Luke,Nope. it is only a RAID1 for the 2 internal discs connected to the SmartArray 6i. This is where I *had* the pg_xlog located when the performance was very poor. Also, I just found out the default stripe size is 128k. Would this be a problem for pg_xlog? The 6-disc RAID10 you speak of is on the SmartArray 642 RAID adapter.SteveOn 8/18/06, Luke Lonergan < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:Steve,If this is an internal RAID1 on two disks, it looks great. Based on the random seeks though (578 seeks/sec), it looks like maybe it's 6disks in a RAID10?- LukeOn 8/16/06 7:10 PM, "Steve Poe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > wrote:> Everyone,>> I wanted to follow-up on bonnie results for the internal RAID1 which is> connected to the SmartArray 6i. I believe this is the problem, but I am> not good at interepting the results. Here's an sample of three runs: >> scsi disc> array ,16G,47983,67,65492,20,37214,6,73785,87,89787,6,578.2,0,16,+,> +++,+,+++,+,+++,+,+++,+,+++,+,+++> scsi disc> array ,16G,54634,75,67793,21,36835,6,74190,88,89314,6, 579.9,0,16,+,> +++,+,+++,+,+++,+,+++,+,+++,+,+++> scsi disc> array ,16G,55056,76,66108,20,36859,6,74108,87,89559,6,585.0,0,16,+,> +++,+,+++,+,+++,+,+++,+ >> This was run on the internal RAID1 on the outer portion of the discs> formatted at ext2.>> Thanks.>> Steve>> On Thu, 2006-08-10 at 10:35 -0500, Scott Marlowe wrote: >> On Thu, 2006-08-10 at 10:15, Luke Lonergan wrote:>>> Mike,>> On 8/10/06 4:09 AM, "Michael Stone" <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > wrote:>>> On Wed, Aug 09, 2006 at 08:29:13PM -0700, Steve Poe wrote:> I tried as you suggested and my performance dropped by 50%. I went from> a 32 TPS to 16. Oh well. If you put data & xlog on the same array, put them on seperate partitions, probably formatted differently (ext2 on xlog).>> If he's doing the same thing on both systems (Sun and HP) and the HP >>> performance is dramatically worse despite using more disks and having faster>>> CPUs and more RAM, ISTM the problem isn't the configuration.>> Add to this the fact that the Sun machine is CPU bound while the HP is I/O >>> wait bound and I think the problem is the disk hardware or the driver>>> therein. I agree. The problem here looks to be the RAID controller. Steve, got access to a different RAID controller to test with? ---(end of broadcast)--->> TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate>>subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your>>message can get through to the mailing list cleanly>>
Re: [PERFORM] most bang for buck with ~ $20,000
Regarding the DL585 etc boxes from HP, they seem to require external JBOD or SCSI/SAS enclosures. Does anyone have any particular preference on how these units should be configured or speced? I'm guessing I'll use the onboard SCSI RAID 1 with the onboard drives for the OS, but will need 2 external channels for the data and xlog. Any recommendations there? Sincerely, Kenji On Sat, Aug 12, 2006 at 04:20:19PM +, Roman Neuhauser wrote: > # [EMAIL PROTECTED] / 2006-08-08 14:49:21 -0700: > > >I am considering a setup such as this: > > > - At least dual cpu (possibly with 2 cores each) > > > - 4GB of RAM > > > - 2 disk RAID 1 array for root disk > > > - 4 disk RAID 1+0 array for PGDATA > > > - 2 disk RAID 1 array for pg_xlog > > > > > >Does anyone know a vendor that might be able provide such setup? > > > > I would look at the HP DL 385 or 585. The 385 is going to max a (2) dual > > core cpus. The 585 is (4) dual core cpus. > > I don't know about DL385 or DL585, but DL380 seem to go south within > 1 year of heavy hitting; precisely the Smart Array RAID controllers > (4 out of 6 disks suddenly "red"; insert new disks, ooops red as > well). > > I've seen this happen several times, and came away with a conclusion > that DL380 is sexy, but you don't want to marry it. Then again, > maybe the DL385 is different, though I seem to remember that both > G3 (Smart Array 5i) and G4 (6i) did this. > > -- > How many Vietnam vets does it take to screw in a light bulb? > You don't know, man. You don't KNOW. > Cause you weren't THERE. http://bash.org/?255991 ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
Re: [PERFORM] Postgresql Performance on an HP DL385 and
Steve, On 8/18/06 10:39 AM, "Steve Poe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Nope. it is only a RAID1 for the 2 internal discs connected to the SmartArray > 6i. This is where I *had* the pg_xlog located when the performance was very > poor. Also, I just found out the default stripe size is 128k. Would this be a > problem for pg_xlog? ISTM that the main performance issue for xlog is going to be the rate at which fdatasync operations complete, and the stripe size shouldn't hurt that. What are your postgresql.conf settings for the xlog: how many logfiles, sync_method, etc? > The 6-disc RAID10 you speak of is on the SmartArray 642 RAID adapter. Interesting - the seek rate is very good for two drives, are they 15K RPM? - Luke ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend
Re: [PERFORM] Postgresql Performance on an HP DL385 and
Luke, ISTM that the main performance issue for xlog is going to be the rate at which fdatasync operations complete, and the stripe size shouldn't hurtthat.I thought so. However, I've also tried running the PGDATA off of the RAID1 as a test and it is poor. What are your postgresql.conf settings for the xlog: how many logfiles,sync_method, etc? wal_sync_method = fsync # the default varies across platforms: # fsync, fdatasync, open_sync, or open_datasync# - Checkpoints -checkpoint_segments = 14 # in logfile segments, min 1, 16MB each checkpoint_timeout = 300 # range 30-3600, in seconds#checkpoint_warning = 30 # 0 is off, in seconds#commit_delay = 0 # range 0-10, in microseconds#commit_siblings = 5 What stumps me is I use the same settings on a Sun box (dual Opteron 4GB w/ LSI MegaRAID 128M) with the same data. This is on pg 7.4.13. > The 6-disc RAID10 you speak of is on the SmartArray 642 RAID adapter.Interesting - the seek rate is very good for two drives, are they 15K RPM?Nope. 10K. RPM. HP's recommendation for testing is to connect the RAID1 to the second channel off of the SmartArray 642 adapter since they use the same driver, and, according to HP, I should not have to rebuilt the RAID1. I have to send the new server to the hospital next week, so I have very little testing time left. Steve
Re: [PERFORM] most bang for buck with ~ $20,000
Thanks Arjen, I have unlimited rack space if I really need it. Is serial/SAS really the better route to go than SCSI these days? I'm so used to ordering SCSI that I've been out of the loop with new disk enclosures and disk tech. I been trying to price out a HP DL585, but those are considerably more than the Dells. Is it worth waiting a few more weeks/months for Dell to release something newer? -Kenji On Wed, Aug 09, 2006 at 07:35:22AM +0200, Arjen van der Meijden wrote: > With such a budget you should easily be able to get something like: > - A 1U high-performance server (for instance the Dell 1950 with 2x > Woodcrest 5160, 16GB of FB-Dimm memory, one 5i and one 5e perc raid > controller and some disks internally) > - An external SAS direct attached disks storage enclosure full with 15k > rpm 36GB disks (for instance the MD1000, with 15x 36GB 15k disks) > > Going for the dell-solution would set you back "only" (including > savings) about $13-$14k. HP offers a similar solutions (a HP DL360G5 or > a DL380G5/DL385 with two MSA50's for instance) which also fit in your > budget afaik. The other players tend to be (a bit) more expensive, force > you to go with Fibre Channel or "ancient" SCSI external storage ;) > > If you'd like to have a product by a generic vendor, have a look at the > Adaptec JS50 SAS Jbod enclosure or Promise's Vtrak 300 (both offer 12 > sas/sata bays in 2U) for storage. > > If you're limited to only 2U of rack space, its a bit more difficult to > get maximum I/O in your budget (you have basically space for about 8 or > 12 3.5" disks (with generic suppliers) or 16 2.5" sff disks (with HP)). > But you should still be able to have two top-off-the-line x86 cpu's (amd > opteron 285 or intel woorcrest 5160) and 16GB of memory (even FB Dimm, > which is pretty expensive). > > Best regards, > > Arjen van der Meijden > > > On 8-8-2006 22:43, Kenji Morishige wrote: > >I've asked for some help here a few months ago and got some really helpfull > >answers regarding RAID controllers and server configuration. Up until > >recently I've been running PostgreSQL on a two year old Dual Xeon 3.06Ghz > >machine with a single channel RAID controller (previously Adaptec 2200S, > >but > >now changed to LSI MegaRAID). The 2U unit is from a generic vendor using > >what > >I believe is a SuperMicro motherboard. In the last week after upgrading > >the > >RAID controller, the machine has had disk failure and some other issues. I > >would like to build a very reliable dedicated postgreSQL server that has > >the > >ultimate possible performance and reliabily for around $20,000. The data > >set > >size is only currently about 4GB, but is increasing by approximately 50MB > >daily. The server also requires about 500 connections and I have been > >monitoring about 100-200 queries per second at the moment. I am planning > >to > >run FreeBSD 6.1 if possible, but I am open to any other suggestions if it > >improves performance. > > > >I am considering a setup such as this: > > - At least dual cpu (possibly with 2 cores each) > > - 4GB of RAM > > - 2 disk RAID 1 array for root disk > > - 4 disk RAID 1+0 array for PGDATA > > - 2 disk RAID 1 array for pg_xlog > > > >Does anyone know a vendor that might be able provide such setup? Any > >critique in this design? I'm thinking having a 2 channel RAID controller to > >seperate the PGDATA, root and pg_xlog. > > > >Sincerely, > >Kenji > > > >---(end of broadcast)--- > >TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster > > ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
Re: [PERFORM] most bang for buck with ~ $20,000
Hi Kenji, I'm not sure what you mean by 'something newer'? The intel woodcrest-cpu's are brand-new compared to the amd opterons. But if you need a 4-cpu config (I take it you want 8-cores in that case), Dell doesn't offer much. Whether something new will come, I don't know. I'm not sure when (or if?) a MP-Woodcrest will arrive and/or when Dell will start offering Opteron-servers. Sas has been designed as the successor to SCSI. As I see it, SAS has currently one major disadvantage. Lots of new servers are equipped with SAS-drives, a few nice SAS-raidcontrollers exist, but the availability of external enclosures for SAS is not widespread yet. So your options of going beyond (say) 8 disks per system are a bit limited. There are of course advantages as well. The bus is much wider (you can have 4 lanes of 3Gbps each to an enclosure). You can mix sas and sata disks, so you could have two arrays in the same enclosure, one big storage bin and a very fast array or just use only sata disks on a sas controller. The cabling itself is also much simpler/more flexible (although using a hot-plug enclosure of course shields you mostly from that). But whether its the right choice to make now? I'm not sure. We weren't to fond of investing a lot of money in an end-of-life system. And since we're a tech-website, we also had to worry about our "being modern image", of course ;) The main disadvantage I see in this case is, as said, the limited availability of external enclosures in comparison to SCSI and Fibre Channel. HP currently only offers their MSA50 (for the rather expensive SFF disks) while their MSA60 (normal disks) will not be available until somewhere in 2007 and Dell also only offers one enclosure, the MD1000. The other big players offer nothing yet, as far as I know, while they normally offer several SCSI and/or FC-enclosures. There are also some third-party enclosures (adaptec and promise for instance) available of course. Best regards, Arjen On 18-8-2006 21:07, Kenji Morishige wrote: Thanks Arjen, I have unlimited rack space if I really need it. Is serial/SAS really the better route to go than SCSI these days? I'm so used to ordering SCSI that I've been out of the loop with new disk enclosures and disk tech. I been trying to price out a HP DL585, but those are considerably more than the Dells. Is it worth waiting a few more weeks/months for Dell to release something newer? -Kenji On Wed, Aug 09, 2006 at 07:35:22AM +0200, Arjen van der Meijden wrote: With such a budget you should easily be able to get something like: - A 1U high-performance server (for instance the Dell 1950 with 2x Woodcrest 5160, 16GB of FB-Dimm memory, one 5i and one 5e perc raid controller and some disks internally) - An external SAS direct attached disks storage enclosure full with 15k rpm 36GB disks (for instance the MD1000, with 15x 36GB 15k disks) Going for the dell-solution would set you back "only" (including savings) about $13-$14k. HP offers a similar solutions (a HP DL360G5 or a DL380G5/DL385 with two MSA50's for instance) which also fit in your budget afaik. The other players tend to be (a bit) more expensive, force you to go with Fibre Channel or "ancient" SCSI external storage ;) If you'd like to have a product by a generic vendor, have a look at the Adaptec JS50 SAS Jbod enclosure or Promise's Vtrak 300 (both offer 12 sas/sata bays in 2U) for storage. If you're limited to only 2U of rack space, its a bit more difficult to get maximum I/O in your budget (you have basically space for about 8 or 12 3.5" disks (with generic suppliers) or 16 2.5" sff disks (with HP)). But you should still be able to have two top-off-the-line x86 cpu's (amd opteron 285 or intel woorcrest 5160) and 16GB of memory (even FB Dimm, which is pretty expensive). Best regards, Arjen van der Meijden On 8-8-2006 22:43, Kenji Morishige wrote: I've asked for some help here a few months ago and got some really helpfull answers regarding RAID controllers and server configuration. Up until recently I've been running PostgreSQL on a two year old Dual Xeon 3.06Ghz machine with a single channel RAID controller (previously Adaptec 2200S, but now changed to LSI MegaRAID). The 2U unit is from a generic vendor using what I believe is a SuperMicro motherboard. In the last week after upgrading the RAID controller, the machine has had disk failure and some other issues. I would like to build a very reliable dedicated postgreSQL server that has the ultimate possible performance and reliabily for around $20,000. The data set size is only currently about 4GB, but is increasing by approximately 50MB daily. The server also requires about 500 connections and I have been monitoring about 100-200 queries per second at the moment. I am planning to run FreeBSD 6.1 if possible, but I am open to any other suggestions if it improves performance. I am considering a setup such as this: - At least dual cpu (poss
Re: [PERFORM] most bang for buck with ~ $20,000
Thanks Arjen for your reply, this is definitely something to consider. I think in our case, we are not too concerned with the tech image as much as if the machine will allow us to scale the loads we need. I'm not sure if we should worry so much about the IO bandwidth as we are not even close to saturating 320MB/s. I think stability, reliability, and ease-of-use and recovery is our main concern at the moment. I currently am runing a load average of about .5 on a dual Xeon 3.06Ghz P4 setup. How much CPU performance improvement do you think the new woodcrest cpus are over these? -Kenji On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 09:41:55PM +0200, Arjen van der Meijden wrote: > Hi Kenji, > > I'm not sure what you mean by 'something newer'? The intel > woodcrest-cpu's are brand-new compared to the amd opterons. But if you > need a 4-cpu config (I take it you want 8-cores in that case), Dell > doesn't offer much. Whether something new will come, I don't know. I'm > not sure when (or if?) a MP-Woodcrest will arrive and/or when Dell will > start offering Opteron-servers. > > Sas has been designed as the successor to SCSI. > > As I see it, SAS has currently one major disadvantage. Lots of new > servers are equipped with SAS-drives, a few nice SAS-raidcontrollers > exist, but the availability of external enclosures for SAS is not > widespread yet. So your options of going beyond (say) 8 disks per system > are a bit limited. > > There are of course advantages as well. The bus is much wider (you can > have 4 lanes of 3Gbps each to an enclosure). You can mix sas and sata > disks, so you could have two arrays in the same enclosure, one big > storage bin and a very fast array or just use only sata disks on a sas > controller. The cabling itself is also much simpler/more flexible > (although using a hot-plug enclosure of course shields you mostly from > that). > But whether its the right choice to make now? I'm not sure. We weren't > to fond of investing a lot of money in an end-of-life system. And since > we're a tech-website, we also had to worry about our "being modern > image", of course ;) > > The main disadvantage I see in this case is, as said, the limited > availability of external enclosures in comparison to SCSI and Fibre > Channel. HP currently only offers their MSA50 (for the rather expensive > SFF disks) while their MSA60 (normal disks) will not be available until > somewhere in 2007 and Dell also only offers one enclosure, the MD1000. > The other big players offer nothing yet, as far as I know, while they > normally offer several SCSI and/or FC-enclosures. > There are also some third-party enclosures (adaptec and promise for > instance) available of course. > > Best regards, > > Arjen > > On 18-8-2006 21:07, Kenji Morishige wrote: > >Thanks Arjen, > >I have unlimited rack space if I really need it. Is serial/SAS really the > >better route to go than SCSI these days? I'm so used to ordering SCSI that > >I've been out of the loop with new disk enclosures and disk tech. I been > >trying to price out a HP DL585, but those are considerably more than the > >Dells. Is it worth waiting a few more weeks/months for Dell to release > >something newer? > > > >-Kenji > > > >On Wed, Aug 09, 2006 at 07:35:22AM +0200, Arjen van der Meijden wrote: > >>With such a budget you should easily be able to get something like: > >>- A 1U high-performance server (for instance the Dell 1950 with 2x > >>Woodcrest 5160, 16GB of FB-Dimm memory, one 5i and one 5e perc raid > >>controller and some disks internally) > >>- An external SAS direct attached disks storage enclosure full with 15k > >>rpm 36GB disks (for instance the MD1000, with 15x 36GB 15k disks) > >> > >>Going for the dell-solution would set you back "only" (including > >>savings) about $13-$14k. HP offers a similar solutions (a HP DL360G5 or > >>a DL380G5/DL385 with two MSA50's for instance) which also fit in your > >>budget afaik. The other players tend to be (a bit) more expensive, force > >>you to go with Fibre Channel or "ancient" SCSI external storage ;) > >> > >>If you'd like to have a product by a generic vendor, have a look at the > >>Adaptec JS50 SAS Jbod enclosure or Promise's Vtrak 300 (both offer 12 > >>sas/sata bays in 2U) for storage. > >> > >>If you're limited to only 2U of rack space, its a bit more difficult to > >>get maximum I/O in your budget (you have basically space for about 8 or > >>12 3.5" disks (with generic suppliers) or 16 2.5" sff disks (with HP)). > >>But you should still be able to have two top-off-the-line x86 cpu's (amd > >>opteron 285 or intel woorcrest 5160) and 16GB of memory (even FB Dimm, > >>which is pretty expensive). > >> > >>Best regards, > >> > >>Arjen van der Meijden > >> > >> > >>On 8-8-2006 22:43, Kenji Morishige wrote: > >>>I've asked for some help here a few months ago and got some really > >>>helpfull > >>>answers regarding RAID controllers and server configuration. Up until > >>>recently I've
Re: [PERFORM] most bang for buck with ~ $20,000
We've been doing some research in this area (the new Woodcrest from Intel, the Opterons from Dell, and SAS). In a nutshell, here's what I'm aware of: Dell does provide a 15 disk external SAS enclosure- the performance numbers they claim look pretty good (of course, go figure) and as far as I can tell, the Perc5/I (the new SAS controller) actually has reasonable performance. I've been playing around with a 2950 with 6x300 GB 10k RPM SAS drives, but no enclosure yet. You can also apparently daisy chain up to 3 enclosures and use multiple perc cards. Dell originally was planning to only support 4 socket opteron boxes, but now they have also apparently decided to support 2 socket ones also. According to this article, they're saying before end of the year. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2004886,00.asp Some say that the Woodcrest performs just as well, if not better than the opteron, but I have been unable to do specific tests as of yet. If anyone has a comparable Opteron box (to a PE2950 2x3.0 8 GB RAM Woodcrest), I'd be happy to run some benchmarks. Lastly, Sun just came out with their new X4600. 48 drives, 24 TB storage, 4 U rack space. http://www.sun.com/servers/x64/x4500/getit.jsp That's over your $20k limit though, but looks like it'd be a great DB box. For $20k with dell, you could probably get a 2 CPU 2950, with an external drive cage and 15 SAS drives (just large/med business pricing on their website). I know I would be very curious about the performance of this setup if anyone got their hands on it. We're a Dell shop, so it looks like we'll be settling in on the 2950 Woodcrest for a while, but I have managed to get some people interested in the Sun box and the 4-way opteron from Dell if the need for more performance should arise. HTH, Bucky -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Arjen van der Meijden Sent: Friday, August 18, 2006 3:42 PM To: Kenji Morishige Cc: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org Subject: Re: [PERFORM] most bang for buck with ~ $20,000 Hi Kenji, I'm not sure what you mean by 'something newer'? The intel woodcrest-cpu's are brand-new compared to the amd opterons. But if you need a 4-cpu config (I take it you want 8-cores in that case), Dell doesn't offer much. Whether something new will come, I don't know. I'm not sure when (or if?) a MP-Woodcrest will arrive and/or when Dell will start offering Opteron-servers. Sas has been designed as the successor to SCSI. As I see it, SAS has currently one major disadvantage. Lots of new servers are equipped with SAS-drives, a few nice SAS-raidcontrollers exist, but the availability of external enclosures for SAS is not widespread yet. So your options of going beyond (say) 8 disks per system are a bit limited. There are of course advantages as well. The bus is much wider (you can have 4 lanes of 3Gbps each to an enclosure). You can mix sas and sata disks, so you could have two arrays in the same enclosure, one big storage bin and a very fast array or just use only sata disks on a sas controller. The cabling itself is also much simpler/more flexible (although using a hot-plug enclosure of course shields you mostly from that). But whether its the right choice to make now? I'm not sure. We weren't to fond of investing a lot of money in an end-of-life system. And since we're a tech-website, we also had to worry about our "being modern image", of course ;) The main disadvantage I see in this case is, as said, the limited availability of external enclosures in comparison to SCSI and Fibre Channel. HP currently only offers their MSA50 (for the rather expensive SFF disks) while their MSA60 (normal disks) will not be available until somewhere in 2007 and Dell also only offers one enclosure, the MD1000. The other big players offer nothing yet, as far as I know, while they normally offer several SCSI and/or FC-enclosures. There are also some third-party enclosures (adaptec and promise for instance) available of course. Best regards, Arjen On 18-8-2006 21:07, Kenji Morishige wrote: > Thanks Arjen, > I have unlimited rack space if I really need it. Is serial/SAS really the > better route to go than SCSI these days? I'm so used to ordering SCSI that > I've been out of the loop with new disk enclosures and disk tech. I been > trying to price out a HP DL585, but those are considerably more than the > Dells. Is it worth waiting a few more weeks/months for Dell to release > something newer? > > -Kenji > > On Wed, Aug 09, 2006 at 07:35:22AM +0200, Arjen van der Meijden wrote: >> With such a budget you should easily be able to get something like: >> - A 1U high-performance server (for instance the Dell 1950 with 2x >> Woodcrest 5160, 16GB of FB-Dimm memory, one 5i and one 5e perc raid >> controller and some disks internally) >> - An external SAS direct attached disks storage enclosure full with 15k >> rpm 36GB disks (for instance the MD1000, with 15x 36GB 15k d
Re: [PERFORM] Postgresql Performance on an HP DL385 and
Title: Re: [PERFORM] Postgresql Performance on an HP DL385 and Steve, One thing here is that “wal_sync_method” should be set to “fdatasync” and not “fsync”. In fact, the default is fdatasync, but because you have uncommented the standard line in the file, it is changed to “fsync”, which is a lot slower. This is a bug in the file defaults. That could speed things up quite a bit on the xlog. WRT the difference between the two systems, I’m kind of stumped. - Luke On 8/18/06 12:00 PM, "Steve Poe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Luke, ISTM that the main performance issue for xlog is going to be the rate at which fdatasync operations complete, and the stripe size shouldn't hurt that. I thought so. However, I've also tried running the PGDATA off of the RAID1 as a test and it is poor. What are your postgresql.conf settings for the xlog: how many logfiles, sync_method, etc? wal_sync_method = fsync # the default varies across platforms: # fsync, fdatasync, open_sync, or open_datasync # - Checkpoints - checkpoint_segments = 14 # in logfile segments, min 1, 16MB each checkpoint_timeout = 300 # range 30-3600, in seconds #checkpoint_warning = 30 # 0 is off, in seconds #commit_delay = 0 # range 0-10, in microseconds #commit_siblings = 5 What stumps me is I use the same settings on a Sun box (dual Opteron 4GB w/ LSI MegaRAID 128M) with the same data. This is on pg 7.4.13. > The 6-disc RAID10 you speak of is on the SmartArray 642 RAID adapter. Interesting - the seek rate is very good for two drives, are they 15K RPM? Nope. 10K. RPM. HP's recommendation for testing is to connect the RAID1 to the second channel off of the SmartArray 642 adapter since they use the same driver, and, according to HP, I should not have to rebuilt the RAID1. I have to send the new server to the hospital next week, so I have very little testing time left. Steve
Re: [PERFORM] most bang for buck with ~ $20,000
Well, that's of course really hard to tell. From personal experience in a read-mostly environment, the subtop woodcrest 5150 (2.6Ghz) outperforms the top dempsey 5080 (3.7Ghz, in the same system) by quite a nice margin. But that dempsey already has the faster FB-Dimm memory and a much wider FSB compared to your 3.06Ghz Xeons. But if we assume that the 3.7Ghz 5080 is just the extra mhz faster (~ 25%), for a single (dual core) 3Ghz Woodcrest you might already be talking about a 50% improvement in terms of cpu-power over your current set-up. Of course depending on workload and its scalability etc etc. In a perfect world, with linear scalability (note, a read-mostly postgresql can actually do that on a Sun fire T2000 with solaris) that would yield a 200% improvement when going form 2 to 4 cores. A 70-80% scaling is more reasonable and would still imply you'd improve more than 150% over your current set-up. Please note that this is partially based on internal testing and partial on assumptions and would at least require more real-world testing for a app more similar to yours. As soon as we're publishing some numbers on this (and I don't forget), I'll let you know on the list. That will include postgresql and recent x86 cpu's on linux and should be ready soon. Best regards, Arjen On 18-8-2006 21:51, Kenji Morishige wrote: Thanks Arjen for your reply, this is definitely something to consider. I think in our case, we are not too concerned with the tech image as much as if the machine will allow us to scale the loads we need. I'm not sure if we should worry so much about the IO bandwidth as we are not even close to saturating 320MB/s. I think stability, reliability, and ease-of-use and recovery is our main concern at the moment. I currently am runing a load average of about .5 on a dual Xeon 3.06Ghz P4 setup. How much CPU performance improvement do you think the new woodcrest cpus are over these? -Kenji On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 09:41:55PM +0200, Arjen van der Meijden wrote: Hi Kenji, I'm not sure what you mean by 'something newer'? The intel woodcrest-cpu's are brand-new compared to the amd opterons. But if you need a 4-cpu config (I take it you want 8-cores in that case), Dell doesn't offer much. Whether something new will come, I don't know. I'm not sure when (or if?) a MP-Woodcrest will arrive and/or when Dell will start offering Opteron-servers. Sas has been designed as the successor to SCSI. As I see it, SAS has currently one major disadvantage. Lots of new servers are equipped with SAS-drives, a few nice SAS-raidcontrollers exist, but the availability of external enclosures for SAS is not widespread yet. So your options of going beyond (say) 8 disks per system are a bit limited. There are of course advantages as well. The bus is much wider (you can have 4 lanes of 3Gbps each to an enclosure). You can mix sas and sata disks, so you could have two arrays in the same enclosure, one big storage bin and a very fast array or just use only sata disks on a sas controller. The cabling itself is also much simpler/more flexible (although using a hot-plug enclosure of course shields you mostly from that). But whether its the right choice to make now? I'm not sure. We weren't to fond of investing a lot of money in an end-of-life system. And since we're a tech-website, we also had to worry about our "being modern image", of course ;) The main disadvantage I see in this case is, as said, the limited availability of external enclosures in comparison to SCSI and Fibre Channel. HP currently only offers their MSA50 (for the rather expensive SFF disks) while their MSA60 (normal disks) will not be available until somewhere in 2007 and Dell also only offers one enclosure, the MD1000. The other big players offer nothing yet, as far as I know, while they normally offer several SCSI and/or FC-enclosures. There are also some third-party enclosures (adaptec and promise for instance) available of course. Best regards, Arjen On 18-8-2006 21:07, Kenji Morishige wrote: Thanks Arjen, I have unlimited rack space if I really need it. Is serial/SAS really the better route to go than SCSI these days? I'm so used to ordering SCSI that I've been out of the loop with new disk enclosures and disk tech. I been trying to price out a HP DL585, but those are considerably more than the Dells. Is it worth waiting a few more weeks/months for Dell to release something newer? -Kenji On Wed, Aug 09, 2006 at 07:35:22AM +0200, Arjen van der Meijden wrote: With such a budget you should easily be able to get something like: - A 1U high-performance server (for instance the Dell 1950 with 2x Woodcrest 5160, 16GB of FB-Dimm memory, one 5i and one 5e perc raid controller and some disks internally) - An external SAS direct attached disks storage enclosure full with 15k rpm 36GB disks (for instance the MD1000, with 15x 36GB 15k disks) Going for the dell-solution would set you back "only" (i
Re: [PERFORM] Postgresql Performance on an HP DL385 and
Luke,I'll try it, but you're right, it should not matter. The two systems are:HP DL385 (dual Opteron 265 I believe) 8GB of RAM, two internal RAID1 U320 10KSun W2100z (dual Opteron 245 I believe) 4GB of RAM, 1 U320 10K drive with LSI MegaRAID 2X 128M driving two external 4-disc arrays U320 10K drives in a RAID10 configuration. Running same version of LInux (Centos 4.3 ) and same kernel version. No changes within the kernel for each of them. Running the same *.conf files for Postgresql 7.4.13.SteveOn 8/18/06, Luke Lonergan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Steve, One thing here is that "wal_sync_method" should be set to "fdatasync" and not "fsync". In fact, the default is fdatasync, but because you have uncommented the standard line in the file, it is changed to "fsync", which is a lot slower. This is a bug in the file defaults. That could speed things up quite a bit on the xlog. WRT the difference between the two systems, I'm kind of stumped. - Luke On 8/18/06 12:00 PM, "Steve Poe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Luke, ISTM that the main performance issue for xlog is going to be the rate at which fdatasync operations complete, and the stripe size shouldn't hurt that. I thought so. However, I've also tried running the PGDATA off of the RAID1 as a test and it is poor. What are your postgresql.conf settings for the xlog: how many logfiles, sync_method, etc? wal_sync_method = fsync # the default varies across platforms: # fsync, fdatasync, open_sync, or open_datasync # - Checkpoints - checkpoint_segments = 14 # in logfile segments, min 1, 16MB each checkpoint_timeout = 300 # range 30-3600, in seconds #checkpoint_warning = 30 # 0 is off, in seconds #commit_delay = 0 # range 0-10, in microseconds #commit_siblings = 5 What stumps me is I use the same settings on a Sun box (dual Opteron 4GB w/ LSI MegaRAID 128M) with the same data. This is on pg 7.4.13. > The 6-disc RAID10 you speak of is on the SmartArray 642 RAID adapter. Interesting - the seek rate is very good for two drives, are they 15K RPM? Nope. 10K. RPM. HP's recommendation for testing is to connect the RAID1 to the second channel off of the SmartArray 642 adapter since they use the same driver, and, according to HP, I should not have to rebuilt the RAID1. I have to send the new server to the hospital next week, so I have very little testing time left. Steve
