[oclug]PostgreSQL Hardware

[Phil Tanguay]

On Sun, 27 Oct 2002, Brad Barnett wrote:
> "Did that."  "What came first."  I'm glad you agree with me, because these
> days the database server can often hit the wall first.  Of course, as I've
> said all along, this depends on the circumstances.  It is quite possible
> to write code on a web server that will hit that bottleneck first.

Well, first off, I don't really want to particpate in the "he said, (s)he
said" you guys are playing with, but I'll throw this in to the equation :

It seems to me that most often, when I see a web site "slashdotted", the
pages have lovely "mySql error: could not open connection" or somesuch.  So I
tend to agree with Brad on this count, usually what seems to fall over first
is the DB server.

With that being said, the biggest issue here is that we don't have enough
data to be able to make an intelligent comments : the way to design a system
(and by system, I mean the combination of both the hardware and software) is
by designing the application, and THEN picking the hardware and applying the
most money to the components that need it most.  In my humble opinion,
picking out the hardware first is a rookie mistake.   It unfortunately
happens quite often, because buying hardware and spending money is "fun" :
analyzing databases schemas and data flow, much less.

But in this situation, with our lack of knowledge of the problem domain,
we're left to make blanket statements that are at best, sometimes true,
sometimes not.  Much like I did in the first paragraph of this post. ;>

My 2c, based on 15 years of system and software design experience.  FWIW.
YMMV. Kids, don't try this at home. :)