Re: understanding postgres issues/bottlenecks

Just to elaborate on the horror that is a Dell perc5e.  We have one in
a 1950 with battery backed cache (256 Meg I think).  It has an 8 disk
500Gig SATA drive RAID-10 array and 4 1.6GHz cpus and 10 Gigs ram.
This server currently serves as a mnogo search server.  Here's what
vmstat 1 looks like during the day:

procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ----cpu----
 r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in   cs us sy id wa
 1  5  38748  60400  43172 9227632    0    0  5676     0  668  703  4  2 12 82
 0  5  38748  58888  43176 9229360    0    0  5548     0  672  792  2  0 15 83
 0  4  38748  64460  43184 9230476    0    0  5964    72  773  947  1  0 31 67
 0  5  38748  61884  43272 9241564    0    0  5896  1112  674 1028  1  2 23 74
 0  5  38748  56612  43276 9247376    0    0  5660     0  603  795  0  0 21 79
 0  5  38748  56472  43268 9247480    0    0  5700     0  603  790  0  0 22 77

Note 4 or 5 blocking, and reading in data at 5M/sec and bursting small writes.
75 to 80% wait state
user and sys time around 1 or 2%
rest is idle.

This is without adding any load from pgbench.  When I add pgbench, the
numbers from vmstat look the same pretty much, slight increase of
maybe 20% bi and bo and a rise in the blocked processes.

Running vacuum on the pgbench db on this machine takes well over a
minute.  Even a small pgbench test runs slowly, getting 20 to 30 tps
during the day.  During off hours I can get a max of about 80 tps.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now, here's my primary production server.  It is NOT a Dell, or an HP,
or an IBM.  It is a high end white box machine with a Tyan mobo.
Primary difference here is 12 disk SAS RAID-10 and a much faster RAID
controller.  It's got 8 opteron 2.1GHz cores but honestly, it hardly
uses any of them.  This is it before I run pgbench.  It almost looks
like it's sleeping.  It is handling about 250 queries per second right
now, most serving from memory.

procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system--
-----cpu------
 r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in   cs us sy id wa st
 0  0   2464 614156 626448 28658476    0    0     0   688 2515 2615 12
 1 87  0  0
 2  0   2464 638972 626448 28658484    0    0     8   656 2401 2454 16
 2 82  0  0
 1  0   2464 631852 626448 28658516    0    0     0   552 1939 1984 14
 1 85  0  0
 4  0   2464 617900 626448 28658532    0    0    32   500 4925 5276 19
 2 78  0  0
 1  0   2464 617656 626448 28658560    0    0     0   492 3363 3428 14
 1 85  0  0
 1  0   2464 618648 626448 28658560    0    0     0   752 3391 3579 12
 2 85  0  0

It's not reading anything in because it fits in memory (it's got 32
Gig ram) and it's writing out a small amount.  I'll run pgbench to
give it a heavier load and force more writes.

pgbench -c 10 -t 25000
starting vacuum...end.
transaction type: TPC-B (sort of)
scaling factor: 100
number of clients: 10
number of transactions per client: 25000
number of transactions actually processed: 250000/250000
tps = 2866.549792 (including connections establishing)
tps = 2868.010947 (excluding connections establishing)

Here's vmstat during that period:

procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system--
-----cpu------
 r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in   cs us sy id wa st
 1  2   2408 190548 626584 28770448    0    0     0 66200 8210 84391
44 14 35  6  0
 0  2   2408 207156 626584 28770900    0    0     0 23832 6688 6426 20
 4 58 18  0
 7  0   2408 295792 626588 28771904    0    0     0 34372 6831 62873
35 12 43 11  0
 3  2   2408 308904 626588 28773128    0    0     0 60040 6711 78235
44 13 40  3  0
 4  0   2408 310408 626588 28773660    0    0     0 54780 7779 37399
28  8 50 15  0
 6  1   2408 325808 626592 28775912    0    0    16 43588 5345 105348
43 15 39  3  0
10  0   2408 324304 626592 28778188    0    0    16 60984 6582 125105
52 18 29  1  0
 8  1   2408 339204 626596 28780248    0    0     8 47956 5203 113799
48 18 33  1  0
 4  2   2408 337856 626596 28782840    0    0     0 108096 12132 90391
46 16 33  4  0

Note that wait is generally around 5 to 10% on this machine.

Now, I know it's a much more powerful machine, but the difference in
performance is not some percentage faster.  It's many many factors
faster.  Twenty or more times as faster as the dell.  That dell
machine cost us somewhere in the range of $11,000.  The MD-1000 was a
large part of that cost.

The Aberdeen white box that is replacing it cost us about $11,500.

I cannot understand how Dell stays in business.  It certainly isn't on merit.