[imc-uk-tech] Dedicated postgre server proposal

[Chris]

Hi

At the Sheffield meeting one thing that we discussed was
getting a dedicated postgres server to speed the site up
-- we have the cash for this.

Gdm has checked with the colo peole and there is the space
and power available (bandwidth usage would be minimal due
to it not needing anything other than ssh open to the
world).

Techies from Brasil (Pietro) and Mir coders (Zapata) think
that postgres is the bottle neck, but Zak said he would
look at doing some benchmarks... any progress on this...?

After our experince with Traven I would not be keen on
getting a supermicro (we chose this because of the remote
power management stuff which never worked and it has 4Gb
RAM but we have only ever been able to use 3Gb) or getting
IDE / SATA hardware RAID of any kind... (3ware cards are
too slow).

Personally I'd pick a SATA or SCSI box from
penguincomputing.com, for example:

- Altus 1300 Server

  - Dual dual core Opteron 265 processors (quad)

  - 4x1Gb RAM (leaving 4 free slots)

  - 2x120Gb SATA HD's which could have software RAID
    (leaving 2 free HD slots)

  $3997.00 USD = £2,259.89 GBP

- Altus 1300 Server

  - Dual single core Opteron 244 processors

  - 8x1Gb RAM (no free slots) 

  - 2x120Gb SATA HD's which could have software RAID
    (leaving 2 free HD slots)

  $3813.00 USD = £2,155.58 GBP

- Altus 1400 Server

  - Dual single core Opteron 244 processors

  - 8x1Gb RAM (no free slots)

  - 1x146Gb SCSI HD (3 free slots)

  $4125.00 USD = £2,333.88 GBP

I don't know what balance of CPU / RAM / HD would be ideal
but HDs and RAM are easier to upgrade in the future in my
experience.

What do people think?

Chris

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