Re: Commercial support, was Re: [HACKERS] v6.4.3 ?
От | Thomas Reinke |
---|---|
Тема | Re: Commercial support, was Re: [HACKERS] v6.4.3 ? |
Дата | |
Msg-id | 36BEFB32.CD4740A0@e-softinc.com обсуждение исходный текст |
Ответ на | Re: Commercial support, was Re: [HACKERS] v6.4.3 ? (jwieck@debis.com (Jan Wieck)) |
Список | pgsql-hackers |
Jan Wieck wrote: > > Terry Mackintosh wrote: > > > > > Hi all > > > > > > That's the reason. One of the biggest drawbacks against > > > > Postgres is (for many companies at least), that you can't buy > > > > support. > > > > IMHO ... > > > > Well, yes one can, one may just need to look around a bit... and pay > > commercial support prices. > > > > Example: > > As for my self I feel confident that I could provide such support, having > > been using Postgres+ since Postgres 0.95? (3?4 years ago?). I charge > > $25/hour, but have been considering going to $30/hour. While I've yet to > > get a PostgreSQL specific job, I have had some other Linux based jobs. > > > > [...] > > Nice idea. > > But a word of caution seems appropriate. > > Commercial support doesn't mean only that you can hire > someone who takes care about your actual problems with the > product. It also means that there is someone you can bill if > that product caused big damage to you (product warranty). > > Commercial support doesn't mean only that you hire someone on > a T/M base (time and material). It also means that you can > sign a support contract with a regular payment and have > written down response- and maximum problem-to-fix times, > escalation levels etc. > Usage decisions also depend on one other MAJOR factor, which Linux has conquered, but I personally feel that PostGres is still a bit shy on: reliability. We use PostGres commercially, and quite frankly have a tough time with it, because of consistent failures with it. Although the price is right, and we hope to stick with PostGres as it matures into a more robust product, others would not touch it when you consider the following reliability problems (admittedly all reported on 6.3): 1. Tables "disappearing" while still listed in the db directory (but no longer visible from the client) 2. Tablesbeing corrupted (i.e. not selectable, not vacuumable, not exportable) 3. Vacuum commands that take longer to runafter one day of table updates than if the table was to be dumped and reloaded (e.g. table with 1.7 million rows,200,000 rows being updated each day) 4. An inability to run multiple clients simultaneously without havingthe backends choke and kick everybody out (we've had to implement a lock manager that restricts db access to one client at a time) (Part of the test suite should be an 8 hour or so load test that has multiple clients reading/writing to the same/different tables...might be surprised what you find) 5. Memory leaks/poor mem managementin various components that need to be worked around (vacuum, insert of existing rec into uniquely indexedtable) Linux is successful because it is reliable, and because many folks are WILLING to risk an OS that has the perception of being unsupported, if once they install it it will run cleanly. However, anyone using a database for any sort of serious application will generally have a more stringent set of criteria that they apply to their selection process. I.e. PostGres is tackling a tougher market than Linux is tackling, and it will have to be correspondingly more mature in order to enjoy the same success. Reword? We would be happier if someone were to iron all the problems out of postgres that make it unreliable, and not very robust, than if someone were to provide commercial support (which will NOT fix the aforementioned problems!) Thomas ------------------------------------------------------------ Thomas Reinke Tel: (416) 460-7021 Director of Technology Fax: (416) 598-2319 E-Soft Inc. http://www.e-softinc.com
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