Re: [PERFORM] Tips Tricks for validating hardware/os

2007-05-23 Thread Andreas Kostyrka
You forgot pulling some RAID drives at random times to see how the hardware 
deals with the fact. And how it deals with the rebuild afterwards. (Many RAID 
solutions leave you with worst of both worlds, taking longer to rebuild than a 
restore from backup would take, while at the same ime providing a disc IO 
performance that is SO bad that the server becomes useless during the rebuild)

Andreas

-- Ursprüngl. Mitteil. --
Betreff:Re: [PERFORM] Tips  Tricks for validating hardware/os
Von:Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Datum:  23.05.2007 05:15

On Tue, 22 May 2007, Stephane Bailliez wrote:

 Out of curiosity, can anyone share his tips  tricks to validate a machine 
 before labelling it as 'ready to use postgres - you probably won't trash my 
 data today' ?

Write a little script that runs pgbench in a loop forever.  Set your 
shared_buffer cache to use at least 50% of the memory in the machine, and 
adjust the database size and concurrent clients so it's generating a 
substantial amount of disk I/O and using a fair amount of the CPU.

Install the script so that it executes on system startup, like adding it 
to rc.local Put the machine close to your desk.  Every time you walk by 
it, kill the power and then start it back up.  This will give you a mix of 
long overnight runs with no interruption to stress the overall system, 
with a nice dose of recovery trauma.  Skim the Postgres and OS log files 
every day.  Do that for a week, if it's still running your data should be 
safe under real conditions.

--
* Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD

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Re: [PERFORM] Tips Tricks for validating hardware/os

2007-05-23 Thread Greg Smith

On Tue, 22 May 2007, Stephane Bailliez wrote:

Out of curiosity, can anyone share his tips  tricks to validate a machine 
before labelling it as 'ready to use postgres - you probably won't trash my 
data today' ?


Write a little script that runs pgbench in a loop forever.  Set your 
shared_buffer cache to use at least 50% of the memory in the machine, and 
adjust the database size and concurrent clients so it's generating a 
substantial amount of disk I/O and using a fair amount of the CPU.


Install the script so that it executes on system startup, like adding it 
to rc.local Put the machine close to your desk.  Every time you walk by 
it, kill the power and then start it back up.  This will give you a mix of 
long overnight runs with no interruption to stress the overall system, 
with a nice dose of recovery trauma.  Skim the Postgres and OS log files 
every day.  Do that for a week, if it's still running your data should be 
safe under real conditions.


--
* Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD

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Re: [PERFORM] Tips Tricks for validating hardware/os

2007-05-23 Thread Vivek Khera


On May 23, 2007, at 2:32 AM, Andreas Kostyrka wrote:

You forgot pulling some RAID drives at random times to see how the  
hardware deals with the fact. And how it deals with the rebuild  
afterwards. (Many RAID solutions leave you with worst of both  
worlds, taking longer to rebuild than a restore from backup would  
take, while at the same ime providing a disc IO performance that is  
SO bad that the server becomes useless during the rebuild)


*cough* adaptec *cough* :-(


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[PERFORM] Tips Tricks for validating hardware/os

2007-05-22 Thread Stephane Bailliez

Hi,

Out of curiosity, can anyone share his tips  tricks to validate a 
machine before labelling it as 'ready to use postgres - you probably 
won't trash my data today' ?
I'm looking for a way to stress test components especially kernel/disk 
to have confidence  0 that I can use postgres on top of it.


Any secret trick is welcome (beside the memtest one :)

Thanks !

-- stephane

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Re: [PERFORM] Tips Tricks for validating hardware/os

2007-05-22 Thread Alexander Staubo

On 5/22/07, Stephane Bailliez [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Out of curiosity, can anyone share his tips  tricks to validate a
machine before labelling it as 'ready to use postgres - you probably
won't trash my data today' ?
I'm looking for a way to stress test components especially kernel/disk
to have confidence  0 that I can use postgres on top of it.

Any secret trick is welcome (beside the memtest one :)


Compile the Linux kernel -- it's a pretty decent stress test.

You could run pgbench, which comes with PostgreSQL (as part of the
contrib package). Give a database size that's larger than the amount
of physical memory in the box.

Alexander.

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Re: [PERFORM] Tips Tricks for validating hardware/os

2007-05-22 Thread PFC



Out of curiosity, can anyone share his tips  tricks to validate a
machine before labelling it as 'ready to use postgres - you probably
won't trash my data today' ?
I'm looking for a way to stress test components especially kernel/disk
to have confidence  0 that I can use postgres on top of it.


	That would be running a filesystem benchmark, pulling the plug, then  
counting the dead.


http://sr5tech.com/write_back_cache_experiments.htm

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