Re: Which processor runs better for Postgresql?

I have a client who is running Postgresql 7.4.x series database
(required to use 7.4.x). They are planning an upgrade to a new server.
They are insistent on Dell.

I have personal experience with AMD dual Opteron, but I have not seen
any benchmarks on Intel's dual core Xeon. I've seen in the past Dell and
not performed well as well as Xeon's HT issues.

Can anyone share what their experience has been with Intel's dual core
CPUs and/or Dell's new servers?

I am hoping the client is willing to wait for Dell to ship a AMD
Opeteron-based server.

Thanks.

Steve Poe

steve(dot)poe(at)gmail(dot)com (Steve Poe) writes:
> I have a client who is running Postgresql 7.4.x series database
> (required to use 7.4.x). They are planning an upgrade to a new server.
> They are insistent on Dell.

Then they're being insistent on poor performance.

If you search for "dell postgresql performance" you'll find plenty of
examples of people who have been disappointed when they insisted on
Dell for PostgreSQL.

Here is a *long* thread on the matter...
<http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-performance/2004-12/msg00022.php>

> I am hoping the client is willing to wait for Dell to ship a AMD
> Opeteron-based server.

Based on Dell's history, I would neither:

a) Hold my breath, nor

b) Expect an Opteron-based Dell server to perform as well as
seemingly-equivalent servers provisioned by other vendors.

We got burned by some Celestica-built Opterons that didn't turn out
quite as hoped.

We have had somewhat better results with some HP Opterons; they appear
to be surviving less-than-ideal 3rd world data centre situations with
reasonable aplomb. (Based on the amount of dust in their diet, I'm
somewhat surprised the disk drives are still running...)
--
let name="cbbrowne" and tld="acm.org" in name ^ "@" ^ tld;;
http://cbbrowne.com/info/nonrdbms.html
We are Pentium of Borg. Division is futile. You will be approximated.
(seen in someone's .signature)

On Tue, 2006-06-13 at 13:02, Steve Poe wrote:
> I have a client who is running Postgresql 7.4.x series database
> (required to use 7.4.x). They are planning an upgrade to a new server.
> They are insistent on Dell.

Do they have a logical reason for this, or is it mostly hand-waving? My
experience has been hand waving. Last company I was at, the CIO bragged
about having saved a million a year on server by going with Dell. His
numbers were made up, and, in fact, we spent a large portion of each
week babysitting those god awful 2600 series machines with adaptec cards
and the serverworks chipset. And they were slow compared to anything
else with similar specs.

> I have personal experience with AMD dual Opteron, but I have not seen
> any benchmarks on Intel's dual core Xeon. I've seen in the past Dell and
> not performed well as well as Xeon's HT issues.

Dells tend to perform poorly, period. They choose low end parts (the
2600's Serverworks chipset is widely regarded as one of the slowest
chipset for the P-IV there is.) and then mucking around with the BIOS of
the add in cards to make them somewhat stable with their dodgy hardware.

> Can anyone share what their experience has been with Intel's dual core
> CPUs and/or Dell's new servers?

Haven't used the dual core Dells. Latest ones I've used are the dual
Xeon 2850 machines, which are at least stable, if still pretty pokey.

> I am hoping the client is willing to wait for Dell to ship a AMD
> Opeteron-based server.

Let's just hope Dell hasn't spent all this time hamstringing a good chip
with low end, underperforming hardware, eh?

My suggestion is to look at something like this:

http://www.abmx.com/1u-supermicro-amd-opteron-rackmount-server-p-210.html

1U rackmount opteron from Supermicro that can have two dual core
opterons and 4 drives and up to 16 gigs of ram. Supermicro server
motherboards have always treated me well and performed well too.

>My suggestion is to look at something like this:
>
>http://www.abmx.com/1u-supermicro-amd-opteron-rackmount-server-p-210.html
>
>1U rackmount opteron from Supermicro that can have two dual core
>opterons and 4 drives and up to 16 gigs of ram. Supermicro server
>motherboards have always treated me well and performed well too.
>
>
I've had good experience with similar machines from Tyan :
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/gt24b2891.html

David Boreham wrote:
>
> >My suggestion is to look at something like this:
> >
> >http://www.abmx.com/1u-supermicro-amd-opteron-rackmount-server-p-210.html
> >
> >1U rackmount opteron from Supermicro that can have two dual core
> >opterons and 4 drives and up to 16 gigs of ram. Supermicro server
> >motherboards have always treated me well and performed well too.
> >
> >
> I've had good experience with similar machines from Tyan :
> http://www.tyan.com/products/html/gt24b2891.html

In fact I think Tyan makes the Supermicro motherboards.

--
Bruce Momjian http://candle.pha.pa.us
EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com

+ If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

Scott Marlowe wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-06-13 at 13:02, Steve Poe wrote:
>> I have a client who is running Postgresql 7.4.x series database
>> (required to use 7.4.x). They are planning an upgrade to a new server.
>> They are insistent on Dell.
>
> Do they have a logical reason for this, or is it mostly hand-waving?

They probably do. They have probably standardized on Dell hardware. It
is technically a dumb reason, but from a business standpoint it makes sense.

My
> experience has been hand waving. Last company I was at, the CIO bragged
> about having saved a million a year on server by going with Dell. His
> numbers were made up, and, in fact, we spent a large portion of each
> week babysitting those god awful 2600 series machines with adaptec cards
> and the serverworks chipset. And they were slow compared to anything
> else with similar specs.

You can get extremely competitive quotes from IBM or HP as long as you
say, "You are competing against Dell".

> Dells tend to perform poorly, period. They choose low end parts (the
> 2600's Serverworks chipset is widely regarded as one of the slowest
> chipset for the P-IV there is.) and then mucking around with the BIOS of
> the add in cards to make them somewhat stable with their dodgy hardware.

I can confirm this.

>> I am hoping the client is willing to wait for Dell to ship a AMD
>> Opeteron-based server.

Tell them to go with an HP DL 385. They will be much happier.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

--

=== The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. ===
Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564 || 24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240
Providing the most comprehensive PostgreSQL solutions since 1997
http://www.commandprompt.com/

On Tue, Jun 13, 2006 at 12:44:17PM -0700, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> You can get extremely competitive quotes from IBM or HP as long as you
> say, "You are competing against Dell".

Possibly even more competitive from Sun...
--
Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant jnasby(at)pervasive(dot)com
Pervasive Software http://pervasive.com work: 512-231-6117
vcard: http://jim.nasby.net/pervasive.vcf cell: 512-569-9461

On Jun 13, 2006, at 2:02 PM, Steve Poe wrote:

>
> Can anyone share what their experience has been with Intel's dual core
> CPUs and/or Dell's new servers?

I'm one of the few Dell fans around here... but I must say that I
don't buy them for my big DB servers specifically since they don't
currently ship Opteron based systems. (I did call and thank my sales
rep for pushing my case for them to do Opterons, though, since I'm
sure they are doing it as a personal favor to me :-) )

I just put up a pentium-D dual-core based system and it is pretty
wickedly fast. it only has a pair of SATA drives on it and is used
for pre-production testing.

>
> I am hoping the client is willing to wait for Dell to ship a AMD
> Opeteron-based server.

Don't wait. It will be *months* before that happens. Go get a Sun
X4100 and an external RAID array and be happy. These boxes are an
amazing work of engineering.

Vivek,

Thanks for your feedback. Which Dell server did you purchase?

The client has a PowerEdge 2600 and they STILL want Dell. Again, if it
were my pocketbook, Dell would not be there.

The client has a 30GB DB. This is large for me, but probably not with
you. Also, I am advising the client to go to a 10+ disc array (from 3)
and enough RAM to load half the DB into memory.

Steve

On Thu, 2006-06-15 at 12:22 -0400, Vivek Khera wrote:
> On Jun 13, 2006, at 2:02 PM, Steve Poe wrote:
>
> >
> > Can anyone share what their experience has been with Intel's dual core
> > CPUs and/or Dell's new servers?
>
> I'm one of the few Dell fans around here... but I must say that I
> don't buy them for my big DB servers specifically since they don't
> currently ship Opteron based systems. (I did call and thank my sales
> rep for pushing my case for them to do Opterons, though, since I'm
> sure they are doing it as a personal favor to me :-) )
>
> I just put up a pentium-D dual-core based system and it is pretty
> wickedly fast. it only has a pair of SATA drives on it and is used
> for pre-production testing.
>
> >
> > I am hoping the client is willing to wait for Dell to ship a AMD
> > Opeteron-based server.
>
> Don't wait. It will be *months* before that happens. Go get a Sun
> X4100 and an external RAID array and be happy. These boxes are an
> amazing work of engineering.
>

On Jun 15, 2006, at 1:10 PM, Steve Poe wrote:

> Vivek,
>
> Thanks for your feedback. Which Dell server did you purchase?

I have many many dell rackmounts: 1550, 1650, 1750, 1850, and SC1425
and throw in a couple of 2450.

I *really* like the 1850 with built-in SCSI RAID. It is fast enough
to be a replica of my primary bread and butter database running on a
beefy opteron system (using Slony-1 replication).

The SC1425 boxes make for good, cheap web front end servers. We buy
'em in pairs and load balance them at the network layer using CARP.

At the office we have mostly SC400 series (400, 420, and 430) for our
servers. The latest box is an SC430 with dual core pentium D and
dual SATA drives running software mirror. It pushes over 20MB/s on
the disks, which is pretty impressive for the hardware.

>
> The client has a PowerEdge 2600 and they STILL want Dell. Again, if it
> were my pocketbook, Dell would not be there.

I lucked out and skipped the 2650 line, apparently :-)

I used the 2450's as my DB servers and they were barely adequate once
we got beyond our startup phase, and moving them over to Opteron was
a godsend. I tried some small opteron systems vendor but had QC
issues (1 of 5 systems stable), so went with Sun and have not looked
back. I still buy Dell's for all other server purposes mainly
because it is convenient in terms of purchasing and getting support
(ie, business reasons).

And I don't spend all my time babysitting these boxes, like others
imply.

>
> The client has a 30GB DB. This is large for me, but probably not with
> you. Also, I am advising the client to go to a 10+ disc array (from 3)
> and enough RAM to load half the DB into memory.

30GB DB on a 10 disk array seems overkill, considering that the
smallest disks you're going to get will be 36GB (or perhaps 72Gb by
now).