From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Oct 24 00:00:33 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: stable@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7605716A4EC for ; Tue, 24 Oct 2006 00:00:33 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from cswiger@mac.com) Received: from smtpout.mac.com (smtpout.mac.com [17.250.248.174]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9288443D4C for ; Tue, 24 Oct 2006 00:00:31 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from cswiger@mac.com) Received: from mac.com (smtpin05-en2 [10.13.10.150]) by smtpout.mac.com (Xserve/8.12.11/smtpout04/MantshX 4.0) with ESMTP id k9O00S8j027303; Mon, 23 Oct 2006 17:00:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [17.214.13.96] (a17-214-13-96.apple.com [17.214.13.96]) (authenticated bits=0) by mac.com (Xserve/smtpin05/MantshX 4.0) with ESMTP id k9O00NAV018001; Mon, 23 Oct 2006 17:00:24 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <453D53ED.5050403@rogers.com> References: <453D49D2.1010705@rogers.com> <3861E2E8-4232-4C46-8D0A-1B6079BCA07D@mac.com> <453D53ED.5050403@rogers.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.2) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Message-Id: <5B0599EE-17BE-44E1-8CEC-587FFF1D79C4@mac.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Chuck Swiger Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2006 17:00:22 -0700 To: Mike Jakubik X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.752.2) X-Brightmail-Tracker: AAAAAA== X-Brightmail-scanned: yes Cc: stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Running large DB's on FreeBSD X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 00:00:33 -0000 On Oct 23, 2006, at 4:44 PM, Mike Jakubik wrote: >> Moderately...it kinda depends on the budget available. I regard >> Solaris + Oracle as one of the most reliable combinations for >> moderate to extreme load, for a system that might well be in >> operation for five to ten years. If I was going to do FreeBSD, I >> might look into Postgres instead of MySQL; well, I might look into >> something else than MySQL under many circumstances. I've gotten >> some pretty good use out of OpenBase, for another choice. > > I believe the front-end application is MySQL dependent, but what is > so much better about PostgreSQL? I understand that it has some more > advanced features, but if they are not used, then what is the > advantage? (I really like the InnooDB storage in MySQL) I'm not sure whether avoiding deadlocks and using row-level locking by default qualifies as "advanced features", but unless you use InnoDB with MySQL, you don't get that from MySQL. Postgres has been around for a lot longer, and isn't as volatile as MySQL seems to be; also, it avoids some of the needless timer overhead that MySQL seems to enjoy, and the less-accurate-but-much-quicker gettimeofday() under Linux helps MySQL on that platform versus FreeBSD. >> As for the disk configuration, using RAID-5 is one of the worst >> possible choices for a database; using multiple RAID-1 mirrors or >> a RAID-10 config would probably do a lot better in terms of >> performance and reliability. > > Is RAID5 really that bad when a lot of fast disks are used and the > controller has a decent cache with a BBWC? Thanks for the feedback > guys. Yes, RAID-5 really can be that bad, unless your database is read-only or read-mostly. Lots of small writes will perform badly under RAID-5, even with a battery-backed write-cache in write-back mode... -- -Chuck