Re: Hardware and OS for postgresql

On Sat, Mar 20, 2004 at 07:52:08PM -0800, Ghazan Haider wrote:

> (1) Scaling in which direction will help postgresql best, given the
> queries are CPU, memory, io and disk-intensive? I understand dual-CPUs
> will help in certain circumstances, but say for large subqueries which
> are built in the memory, will it help to have a server in which there
> are memory segments dedicated to each CPUs? In this regard, does
> anyone know of a specific Sun Ultra, RS/6000 HP or Dell  server whose
> architecture is especially favorable to Postgresql or databases in
> general?

I think dedicating memory to individual CPUs is likely to be
counter-productive.  You won't be able to share the memory for
filesystem buffers, which are the things most likely to give you the
biggest return.

I _can_ tell you that I've recently had an opportunity to work with a
fairly large IBM RS/6000 (P650), and it is one fast machine.  It's
sort of unfair to compare it to UltraSPARC II machines, but I
certainly am impressed as compared to Sun's E4500.

A

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