Re: Hardware for PostgreSQL

["Kevin Grittner" <Kevin(dot)Grittner(at)wicourts(dot)gov>]

>>> On Wed, Oct 31, 2007 at 11:45 AM, in message
<1193849108(dot)591961(dot)103570(at)22g2000hsm(dot)googlegroups(dot)com>, Ketema
<ketema(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote: 
 
> Who has built the biggest baddest Pg server out there and what do you
> use?
 
I don't think that would be us, but I can give you an example of
what can work.  We have a 220 GB database which is a replication
target for OLTP and supports a web site with about 2 million web
hits per day.  Daily, we have about 1 million database transactions
which modify data and 10 million database transactions which are
read-only.  The box has 8 4 GHz Xeon processors, 12 GB RAM, and RAID
5 with 13 live spindles and two hot spares.  The RAID controller has
256 MB RAM with battery backup.  This gives very good performance,
properly tuned.
 
Besides the PostgreSQL database, the box also runs middle tier
software written in Java.
 
I'll second the opinions that connection pooling and a high-
quality RAID controller with battery backed RAM cache are crucial.
 
-Kevin