Re: [PERFORM] [pgsql-jobs] Looking for database hosting

Hello,

Just to note something interesting on database scalability: i'm not sure whether your database is used for processing or just data lookup, but if it's used for data lookup, look into memcached -- it's a really scalable caching system which can reduce your database load a lot.

I know a lot of large websites (slashdot, livejournal, etc) use this solution -- they have dozens of gigabytes worth of memcached processes to reduce the cache hits (I'm told livejournal has around 200 of those servers running, making sure around 99.99% of the database queries are just cache hits). This probably has been discussed on this list before, but just in case: look into it.

Regards,

Leon Mergen

On 8/19/07, Andrew Hammond <andrew.george.hammond@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Nik, you may be underestimating just how much performance can be obtained
> from a single database server. For example, an IBM p595 server connected to
> an array of ds8300 storage devices could reasonably be expected to provide
> several orders of magnitude more performance when compared to commodity
> hardware. In commodity space (albeit, just barely), a 16 core opteron
> running (the admittedly yet-to-be-released) FreeBSD 7, and a suitably
> provisioned SAN should also enormously outperform a beige-box solution, and
> at a fraction of the cost. If it's performance you care about then the
> pgsql-performance list (which I have cc'd) is the place to talk about it.
>
> I realize this doesn't address your desire to get out of database server
> administration. I am not aware of any company which provides database
> hosting, further I'm not entirely convinced that's a viable business
> solution. The technical issues (security, latency and reliability are the
> ones that immediately come to mind) associated with a hosted database server
> solution suggest to me that this would not be economically viable. The
> business issues around out-sourcing a critical, if not central component of
> your architecture seem, at least to me, to be insurmountable.
>
> Andrew
>
>
> On 8/19/07, Niklas Saers <niklassaers@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> > the company I'm doing work for is expecting a 20 times increase in
> > data and seeks a 10 times increase in performance. Having pushed our
> > database server to the limit daily for the past few months we have
> > decided we'd prefer to be database users rather than database server
> > admins. :-)
> >
> > Are you or can you recommend a database hosting company that is good
> > for clients that require more power than what a single database
> > server can offer?
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> > Nik
> >
> > ---------------------------(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
> >
>
>

-- 
Leon Mergen
http://www.solatis.com