Re: [PERFORM] Performance problems on 4/8way Opteron (dualcore) HP
Anybody knows if RedHat is already supporting this patch on an enterprise version? Regards, Dirk J. Andrew Rogers wrote: On 7/29/05 10:46 AM, Josh Berkus josh@agliodbs.com wrote: does anybody have expierence with this machine (4x 875 dual core Opteron CPUs)? Nope. I suspect that you may be the first person to report in on dual-cores. There may be special compile issues with dual-cores that we've not yet encountered. There was recently a discussion of similar types of problems on a couple of the supercomputing lists, regarding surprisingly substandard performance from large dual-core opteron installations. The problem as I remember it boiled down to the Linux kernel handling memory/process management very badly on large dual core systems -- pathological NUMA behavior. However, this problem has apparently been fixed in Linux v2.6.12+, and using the more recent kernel on large dual core systems generated *massive* performance improvements on these systems for the individuals with this issue. Using the patched kernel, one gets the performance most people were expecting. The v2.6.12+ kernels are a bit new, but they contain a very important performance patch for systems like the one above. It would definitely be worth testing if possible. J. Andrew Rogers ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 3: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq
Re: [PERFORM] Performance problems on 4/8way Opteron (dualcore) HP
Hi Jeff, which box are you running precisely and which OS/kernel? We need to run 32bit because we need failover to 32 bit XEON system (DL580). If this does not work out we probably need to switch to 64 bit (dump/restore) and run a nother 64bit failover box too. Regards, Dirk Jeffrey W. Baker wrote: On Fri, 2005-07-29 at 10:46 -0700, Josh Berkus wrote: Dirk, does anybody have expierence with this machine (4x 875 dual core Opteron CPUs)? I'm using dual 275s without problems. Nope. I suspect that you may be the first person to report in on dual-cores. There may be special compile issues with dual-cores that we've not yet encountered. Doubtful. However you could see improvements using recent Linux kernel code. There have been some patches for optimizing scheduling and memory allocations. However, if you are running this machine in 32-bit mode, why did you bother paying $14,000 for your CPUs? You will get FAR better performance in 64-bit mode. 64-bit mode will give you 30-50% better performance on PostgreSQL loads, in my experience. Also, if I remember correctly, the 32-bit x86 kernel doesn't understand Opteron NUMA topology, so you may be seeing poor memory allocation decisions. -jwb We run RHEL 3.0, 32bit and under high load it is a drag. We mostly run memory demanding queries. Context switches are pretty much around 20.000 on the average, no cs spikes when we run many processes in parallel. Actually we only see two processes in running state! When there are only a few processes running context switches go much higher. At the moment we are much slower that with a 4way XEON box (DL580). Um, that was a bit incoherent. Are you seeing a CS storm or aren't you? ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 9: In versions below 8.0, the planner will ignore your desire to choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not match
Re: [PERFORM] Performance problems on 4/8way Opteron (dualcore) HP DL585
Dirk, does anybody have expierence with this machine (4x 875 dual core Opteron CPUs)? Nope. I suspect that you may be the first person to report in on dual-cores. There may be special compile issues with dual-cores that we've not yet encountered. We run RHEL 3.0, 32bit and under high load it is a drag. We mostly run memory demanding queries. Context switches are pretty much around 20.000 on the average, no cs spikes when we run many processes in parallel. Actually we only see two processes in running state! When there are only a few processes running context switches go much higher. At the moment we are much slower that with a 4way XEON box (DL580). Um, that was a bit incoherent. Are you seeing a CS storm or aren't you? -- --Josh Josh Berkus Aglio Database Solutions San Francisco ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 9: In versions below 8.0, the planner will ignore your desire to choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not match
Re: [PERFORM] Performance problems on 4/8way Opteron (dualcore) HP
On Fri, 2005-07-29 at 10:46 -0700, Josh Berkus wrote: Dirk, does anybody have expierence with this machine (4x 875 dual core Opteron CPUs)? I'm using dual 275s without problems. Nope. I suspect that you may be the first person to report in on dual-cores. There may be special compile issues with dual-cores that we've not yet encountered. Doubtful. However you could see improvements using recent Linux kernel code. There have been some patches for optimizing scheduling and memory allocations. However, if you are running this machine in 32-bit mode, why did you bother paying $14,000 for your CPUs? You will get FAR better performance in 64-bit mode. 64-bit mode will give you 30-50% better performance on PostgreSQL loads, in my experience. Also, if I remember correctly, the 32-bit x86 kernel doesn't understand Opteron NUMA topology, so you may be seeing poor memory allocation decisions. -jwb We run RHEL 3.0, 32bit and under high load it is a drag. We mostly run memory demanding queries. Context switches are pretty much around 20.000 on the average, no cs spikes when we run many processes in parallel. Actually we only see two processes in running state! When there are only a few processes running context switches go much higher. At the moment we are much slower that with a 4way XEON box (DL580). Um, that was a bit incoherent. Are you seeing a CS storm or aren't you? ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
