Re: Hardware suggestions for Linux/PGSQL server

Shridhar Daithankar wrote:
>
> FWIW, there are only two pieces of software that need 64bit aware for a
> typical server job. Kernel and glibc. Rest of the apps can do fine as 32
> bits unless you are oracle and insist on outsmarting OS.
>
> In fact running 32 bit apps on 64 bit OS has plenty of advantages like
> effectively using the cache. Unless you need 64bit, going for 64bit
> software is not advised.

This is a good point. While doing research on this matter a few months
back, I saw comments by people testing 64-bit MySQL that some operations
would run faster and some slower due to the use of 64-bit datatypes
versus 32-bit. The best solution in the end is probably to run 32-bit
Postgres under a 64-bit kernel -- unless your DB tends to have a lot of
64-bit datatypes.