Re: a heavy duty operation on an "unused" table kills my server

On Wed, 20 Jan 2010, Greg Smith wrote:
>> Basically, to an extent, that's right. However, when you get 16 drives or
>> more into a system, then it starts being an issue.
>
> I guess if I test a system with *only* 16 drives in it one day, maybe I'll
> find out.

*Curious* What sorts of systems have you tried so far?

As the graph I just sent shows, the four schedulers are pretty-much
identical in performance, until you start saturating it with simultaneous
requests. CFQ levels out at a performance a little lower than the other
three.

> Seriously though, there is some difference between a completely synthetic
> test like you noted issues with here, and anything you can see when running
> the database.

Granted, this test is rather synthetic. It is testing the rather unusual
case of lots of simultaneous random small requests - more simultaneous
requests than we advise people to run backends on a server. You'd probably
need to get a RAID array a whole lot bigger than 16 drives to have a
"normal workload" capable of demonstrating the performance difference, and
even that isn't particularly major.

Would be interesting research if anyone has a 200-spindle RAID array
hanging around somewhere.

Matthew

--
 A good programmer is one who looks both ways before crossing a one-way street.
 Considering the quality and quantity of one-way streets in Cambridge, it
 should be no surprise that there are so many good programmers there.