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

Hi Steve,

> 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?

Get 12 or 16 x 74GB Western Digital Raptor S-ATA drives, one 3ware
9500S-12 or two 3ware 9500S-8 raid controllers with a battery backup
unit (in case of power loss the controller saves unflushed data), a
decent tyan board for the existing dual xeon with 2 pci-x slots and a
matching 3U case for 12 drives (12 drives internal).

Here in Germany chassis by Chenbro are quite popular, a matching one for
your needs would be the chenbro RM312 or RM414
(http://61.30.15.60/product/product_preview.php?pid=90 and
http://61.30.15.60/product/product_preview.php?pid=95 respectively).

Take 6 or 10 drives for Raid 10 pgdata, 2-drive Raid 1 for Transaction
logs (xlog), 2-drive Raid 1 for OS and Swap, and 2 spare disks.

That should give you about 250 mb/s reads and 70 mb/s sustained write
rate with xfs.

Regards,
Bjoern