Re: PostgreSQL on Linux PC vs MacOS X

Well, the whole reason I have asked this question is because my
developer swears by OS X and PostgreSQL. However, I wanted opinions from
other people who have possibly used a similar setup so I can make an
informed decision. I will certainly keep your advice in mind. I guess
the only reason I was asking about the version of OS X and the G5
processor, is because that is all my developer uses and he seems to
think they make a great combination, but that seems to be at odds with
your experience.

Perhaps some others will weigh in with their experiences and I will be
able to make a sound decision. Fortunately there is no great rush to
decide. Thanks for your help.

Jeff Bohmer wrote:

>> I noticed you ran PostgreSQL on a G4. What version of OS X were you
>> running? Is it possible the issues you were facing were fixed with
>> the newer G5 processor?
>
>
> We were using OS X 10.2 in production.  We currently use 10.3 for our
> development machines.
>
> I would be shocked if a processor could fix stability issues in an
> operating system.  As for performance, I cannot say how much better
> PostgreSQL runs on a G5 as we don't have any G5s.  In terms of
> hardware specs, a G4/1.25Ghz should blow away a P3/800.  But it didn't
> for us, and I think that is because Linux/x86 is much more efficient
> than OS X/ppc.  I do not expect that to change with a newer ppc
> processor.
>
> Since your your developers believe a dual G5 to be plenty, you will
> probably get more than enough performance from an XServe G5 and any
> comparable 2-way Intel or AMD x86 system.  PostgreSQL should handily
> outperform 4D.  If those systems are in your price range, and
> stability isn't a big concern, you should probably go with the OS you
> are more familiar with.
>
> - Jeff
>
>
>> Jeff Bohmer wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> We use PostgreSQL 7.x on both OS X and Linux.  We used to run OS X
>>> in production, but due to numerous problems we switched to Linux. OS
>>> X was not stable at all, especially under load.  It was also a poor
>>> performer under load or not.
>>>
>>> In my tests, a P3/800, 512MB RAM (100MHz bus) was consistently
>>> faster at all queries than a G4/1.25GHz, 1.5GB RAM (266MHz bus) for
>>> our application.  Both machines had single IDE drives.
>>>
>>> Another thing to consider is that you can only get ATA drives with
>>> Apple hardware.  SCSI is not available from Apple, and SCSI devices
>>> have very poor support under OS X.  If a server with ATA drives goes
>>> down at the wrong time, you can lose data.  This happened to us with
>>> our production OS X server last year.  An extended power outage ran
>>> out the UPS battery, the shutdown script did not stop the server in
>>> time, and we had to restore from an earlier backup. For details on
>>> why this can happen with ATA drives, see this thread:
>>>
>>> <http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-general/2003-10/msg01343.php>
>>>
>>> Overall, PostgreSQL has been rock solid, very fast, and
>>> headache-free on Linux.  A complete change from OS X.  Our main
>>> production PostgreSQL server has been up for 234 days now.  In that
>>> period, the only downtime for PostgreSQL has been for planned upgrades.
>>>
>>> As a side note, we've also had major problems running multi-threaded
>>> servers on OS X which run great (stable and much, much faster) on
>>> Linux.
>>>
>>> - Jeff
>>>
>>>
>>>> We currently are running a data intensive web service on a Mac
>>>> using 4D. The developers of our site are looking at converting this
>>>> web service to PostgreSQL. We will have a backup of our three
>>>> production servers at our location. The developers are recommending
>>>> that I purchase a 2GHz Dual Processor G5 with between 2GB and 4 GB
>>>> RAM. They say that this configuration would be able to easily run a
>>>> copy of all three production servers. My question is: has anybody
>>>> had any experience comparing the performance of PostgreSQL on a G5
>>>> Mac versus a PC running Linux? Can anyone tell me if there are any
>>>> benefits of running PostgreSQL on one platform over the other.
>>>> Anything that can help me make the best decision would be appreciated.
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> James Strickland - MCP
>>>> IT Manager
>>>> American Roamer
>>>> 901-377-8585
>>>> http://www.americanroamer.com
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ---------------------------(end of
>>>> broadcast)---------------------------
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>>>>
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>>>
>

--
James Strickland - MCP
IT Manager
American Roamer
901-377-8585
http://www.americanroamer.com