Re: Backup causing poor performance - suggestions

Scott,
The server is a Dell PowerEdge 2900 II with the standard Perc 6/I SAS
controller with 256 MB cache.

Lance Campbell
Project Manager/Software Architect
Web Services at Public Affairs
University of Illinois
217.333.0382
http://webservices.uiuc.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Marlowe [mailto:scott.marlowe@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, May 05, 2008 10:06 AM
To: Campbell, Lance
Cc: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [PERFORM] Backup causing poor performance - suggestions

On Mon, May 5, 2008 at 8:59 AM, Campbell, Lance <lance@uiuc.edu> wrote:
>
> PostgreSQL: 8.2.4

You should update to 8.2.7 as a matter of periodic maintenance.  It's
a very short and easy update.

> We currently backup all of our database tables per schema using
pg_dump
> every half hour.  We have been noticing that the database performance
has
> been very poor during the backup process.  How can I improve the
> performance?
>
>
>
> Server Specs:
>
> Dedicated DB server
>
> Database takes up 8.0 Gig of disk space
>
> 2 Xeon 5160 dual cores 3.0
>
> 16 G of memory
>
> Two disks in raid 1 are used for the OS, database and backups.  SAS
10,000
> RPM drives.
>
> OS: Linux AS 4.x 64 bit

So, what kind of RAID controller are you using?  And can you add more
drives and / or battery backed cache to it?