>>> Can you post the "time dd if=/dev/zero of=bigfile bs=8k count=500000" >>> results? Also do the reverse (read the file) with "time dd if=bigfile >>> of=/dev/null bs=8k". > > I didn't see this come across before... here ya go: > > time dd if=/dev/zero of=bigfile bs=8k count=500000 > > 500000+0 records in > 500000+0 records out > > real 1m52.738s > user 0m0.310s > sys 0m36.590s
So, that's 35MB/s, or 1/2 of a single disk drive. > time dd if=bigfile of=/dev/null bs=8k > > time dd if=bigfile of=/dev/null bs=8k > 500000+0 records in > 500000+0 records out > > real 4m38.742s > user 0m0.320s > sys 0m27.870s And that's 14MB/s, or < 1/4 of a single disk drive. > FYI on your hardware raid comment... I easily get 50 megs a second on my > 3ware controllers and faster on my LSI SATA controllers. Then you are almost getting one disk worth of bandwidth. By comparison, we get this using Linux software RAID on Xeon or Opteron: $ time dd if=/dev/zero of=bigfile bs=8k count=500000 500000+0 records in 500000+0 records out real 0m26.927s user 0m0.074s sys 0m8.769s $ time dd if=bigfile of=/dev/null bs=8k 500000+0 records in 500000+0 records out real 0m28.190s user 0m0.039s sys 0m8.349s with less CPU usage than HW SCSI RAID controllers. - Luke ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 4: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org