FreeBSD hardware solution for a database server (Uzi)

[Stuart Cianos]

Hi Uzi -

That is a decent configuration for a variety of tasks. What type of speed issues are you seeing: is it limited to a couple of queries? How many transactions are you running in a given time period? Have you optimized the indexes on your tables for your particular tasks and/or operations?

If you copy your configuration file and post it to the list (make sure you remove any sensitive info like usernames or passwords, if you store that type of thing in there) we might be able to help you a bit more. If you haven't tuned your config file for your particular configuration, then this can also result in performance not being up to par. Ensure that your kernel is compiled for SMP capability and that your MySQL is compiled with optimization ON for maximum throughput. While the optimization doesn't make a huge difference in the short run, millions of transactions later a couple of miliseconds here and miliseconds there add up to real time.

RAID 0/1 is ideal, although RAID 5 is very sufficient for most all purposes in this case. If we were running Oracle or Sybase, then different RAID configurations suit different storage requirements, i.e. RAID 5 for the table data storage and RAID 0/1 for the transaction logs. There reasons for this get fairly technical, but if you are interested in the reasons behind this you can google the topic. MySQL doesn't have such demanding performance tuning requirements.

- Stuart

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Message: 1
Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2005 14:31:39 +0200
From: "Uzi" <uzi at bmby.com>
Subject: FreeBSD hardware solution for a database server 
To: <freebsd-hardware at freebsd.org>, <freebsd-database at freebsd.org>
Message-ID: <040f01c5a4b9$f5d2dff0$0700a8c0 at uzi>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="windows-1255";
	reply-type=original

Hi

I am looking for a FreeBSD 5.4 hardware/configuration solutions for a MySQL 
database server.

My server is currently running FreeBSD 5.4 with a web/mail/database server 
on a Proliant DL380 G4 (dual Xeon 3.2, 2 GB ram), and the speed isn't fast 
enough.

We have a pretty big database with allot of complex joins/indexes, so a 
dedicated database server seems like the next step (among with 
optimizing/normalizing the database).



Proliant DL580 looks fair to my eyes (as I'm pretty happy with HP)

But I have a few indecisions:



1. 2/4 CPU

2. Amount of ram (4 GB+)

3. And most important (AFAIK) - Storage configuration (RAID 5 / RAID 0+1 
etc.)



What would be the preferred solution?



Thanks,

Uzi



P.S - Please CC me the replies as I'm not subscribed. Thanks.