[PERFORM] Is Diskeeper Automatic Mode safe?
I've got a pair of servers running PostgreSQL 8.0.4 on Windows. We have several tables that add and delete massive amounts of data in a single day and are increasingly having a problem with drive fragmentation and it appears to be giving us a decent performance hit. This is external fragmentation we are dealing with. We already vacuum the tables on a regular basis to reduce internal fragmentation as best as possible. Currently I shut down the PostgreSQL service every few weeks and manually run a defragment of the drive, but this is getting tedious. Diskeeper has an Automatic Mode that runs in the background all the time to handle this for me. They advertise they are compatible with MS SQL server, but don't appear to have any specific info on PostgreSQL. I'm curious if anyone else has used Diskeeper's Automatic Mode in combination with PostgreSQL to defrag and keep the drive defragged while PostgreSQL is actually running. Thanks! -chris -- Sent via pgsql-performance mailing list (pgsql-performance@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-performance
Re: [PERFORM] Is Diskeeper Automatic Mode safe?
On Nov 16, 2009, at 1:09 PM, Robert Haas wrote: I'm not sure what the answer is to your actual question, but I'd highly recommend upgrading to 8.3 or 8.4. The performance is likely to be a lot better, and 8.0/8.1 are no longer supported on Windows. Ugh, yeah, I'd love to upgrade but the powers that get to make that decision have no interest in upgrading. So I'm stuck on 8.0.4, and since I really don't do the PG support itself, I don't even get to voice much of an opinion (I deal really just with making sure the physical hardware is doing what it needs to do, which is where the disk defrag comes in to play). -chris -- Sent via pgsql-performance mailing list (pgsql-performance@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-performance
Re: [PERFORM] Is Diskeeper Automatic Mode safe?
On Nov 16, 2009, at 1:11 PM, Robert Schnabel wrote: I've been a Diskeeper customer for about 10 years now and consider it 'must have' software for Windows machines. So the short answer is yes, I have it running with PostgreSQL and have not had any problems. So that seems to be a definite vote for it should be just fine. I've read the other posts and I understand the concerns that were raised. I may try to do some testing myself since other than the one Yes there isn't anyone else jumping in to say they are doing it safely. Of course there is also no one saying don't do it, just statements of caution as it appears to be an unknown and has the potential to cause problems. It looks like to be really safe I should do some failure testing on my end first. Thanks to everyone for their input! -chris -- Sent via pgsql-performance mailing list (pgsql-performance@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-performance
Re: [PERFORM] Is Diskeeper Automatic Mode safe?
On Nov 16, 2009, at 8:31 PM, Tom Lane wrote: Make sure you're not in the line of fire when (not if) that version eats your data. Particularly on Windows, insisting on not upgrading that version is unbelievably, irresponsibly stupid. There are a *large* number of known bugs. I hear ya, and have agreed with you for a long while. There is a fairly regular and constant fight in house over the issue of upgrading. We get hit on a regular basis with problems that as far as I know are bugs that have been fixed (transaction log rename crashes that take down PG, as well as queries just vanishing into the aether at times of heavy load resulting in hung threads in our Tomcat front end as it waits for something to come back that has disappeared). On Nov 16, 2009, at 9:45 PM, Greg Smith wrote: Yeah, the prudent thing to do in your situation is to issue a CYA memo that says something like "I think the hardware is OK, but due to large number of bugs in PostgreSQL 8.0.4 on Windows it's easy for the database to become corrupted anyway", point toward http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/static/release.html to support that claim and note that 8.0.22 is the absolutely minimum version anyone should be running, then CC everyone up the management chain. You're using a version that considers your data quite tasty and would like to make a snack of it at the first opportunity that arises. Myself and the other guy responsible for the underlying hardware have already gone down this route. The big bosses know our stance and know it isn't us preventing the upgrade. After that, there isn't too much more I can do except sit back and shake my head each time something goes wrong and I get sent on a wild goose chase to find any reason for the failure OTHER than PG. Really it comes down to the DBMs have a firm stance of nothing changes, ever. Me, I say bug fixes are released for a reason. My understanding is, before I joined the company, they did an upgrade from 7 on Linux to 8 on Windows and got bit by some change in PG that broke a bunch of code. After that, they have just refused to budge from the 8.0.4 version we are on and know the code works against. I don't really have any details beyond that and asking for them tends to invoke religious wars in house between the Linux/Open Source people and the Windows/Buy Everything people. So I've given up fighting, covered my butt, and just do the best I can to keep things running. Thanks again for the insights! -chris -- Sent via pgsql-performance mailing list (pgsql-performance@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-performance
