Re: Server Requirements

On 17/12/2009 7:21 AM, Christine Penner wrote:
> Hi,
>
> If we have clients that are going to buy new computers or upgrade
> current ones, what we can recommend to them for optimal system
> performance to run Postgres. These can be servers or desktop PCs. We can
> have from 1-10 users in at a time. At this point all of our database's
> are small but that can change of course.

I think the traditional answer to a question like that is "how long is a
piece of string?"

General guides for PostgreSQL setups are:

   - Use a good quality battery backed RAID controller with disks in
     RAID 10 for performance. Cheaper systems can use a standalone
     disk, non-BBU raid controller, or software RAID 1, but **MUST**
     not have any write caching enabled or you *WILL* lose data.

   - More memory is better. Memory is cheap, so get lots.

   - For lots of concurrent queries, fast disks, more RAM and more CPU
     cores are more important than a fast CPU. For single complex
     queries a fast CPU (with fewer cores) may be important.

Make sure to tune your PostgreSQL install, too.

See the main documentation and wiki.postgresql.org for lots more advice
and information.

--
Craig Ringer