Re: Technical recommendations

Francois Suter wrote:
> I have received via the Advocacy questions about optimising a database
> server using PostgreSQL. The people asking the questions are planning to
> buy a new machine, solely dedicated to serving PostgreSQL. Being no
> specialist of optimisation, could someone help?
>
> They are interested in the 64-bit compatibility and are wondering which
> is better: a machine equiped with Opteron or AMD Athlon 64 3800?

For a server, ECC memory is mandatory. That narrows it down to Opteron
or A64 FX 940 (which is the same thing as an Opteron 1XX). Getting
non-ECC, non-registered memory (A64 3800) would mean (1) succeptible to
crashing/data corruption from memory errors, (2) much lower max memory
size, (3) lower performance when you fill up all memory banks.

> What other components should they bet strongly on: RAM, HD, network card?

High read activity -- a ton of RAM. High write activity -- a kickass
SCSI RAID-0/1 config.