Re: How to improve db performance with $7K?

You could build a dual opteron with 4 GB of ram, 12 10k raptor SATA
drives with a battery backed cache for about 7k or less.

Okay. You trust SATA drives? I've been leary of them for a production
database. Pardon my ignorance, but what is a "battery backed cache"?  I
know the drives have a built-in cache but I don't if that's the same.
Are the 12 drives internal or an external chasis? Could you point me to
a place that this configuration exist?

>
> Or if they are not CPU bound just IO bound you could easily just
> add an external 12 drive array (even if scsi) for less than 7k.
>
I don't believe it is CPU bound. At our busiest hour, the CPU is idle
about 70% on average down to 30% idle at its heaviest. Context switching
averages about 4-5K per hour with momentary peaks to 25-30K for a
minute.  Overall disk performance is poor (35mb per sec).

Thanks for your input.

Steve Poe