Re: File Sytems Types and Os Recomendations

On Tue, 16 Sep 2003, John Allgood wrote:

> Hello
>
>     I am looking for information on what operating systems and
> filesystems people are running postgresql on. I have read so much on this I
> decided to get some input from other people. I at first was leaning toward
> FreeBSD and using its filesystem. We are a linux shop and love it. What are
> thoughts on using ext3 or some other Linux filesystems is there really that
> much performance difference by using ext3 v/s BSD/FS/UFS.

Someone on the list recently compared them, and linux came out marginally
faster than FreeBSD, but the difference was way less than what a faster
I/O subsystem, faster / more memory, or faster / more CPUs would make.

The differences between the different file systems wasn't all that great.

Due to known data loss issues in early 2.4 kernels, my server was built
with ext2 (it does sit on 3 UPSs and one diesel generator, so the chances
of losing power are much lower than chances of losing a disk drive) a year
and a half ago.  Now that we're building replacement servers, we're gonna
use ext3 on RH9 with the latest (from redhat) kernel.

Build a big RAID5 or a medium size RAID1+0 with a good hw controller with
battery backed memory for bet performance, or even linux software RAID
to get the most out of your machine.