Re: [PERFORM] Anyone using a SAN?

From: Alex Deucher <alexdeucher(at)gmail.com>
Date: Wed Feb 13 2008 - 12:58:03 EST

On Feb 13, 2008 12:46 PM, Kenneth Marshall <ktm@rice.edu> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 13, 2008 at 10:56:54AM -0600, Peter Koczan wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > We're considering setting up a SAN where I work. Is there anyone using
> > a SAN, for postgres or other purposes? If so I have a few questions
> > for you.
> >
> > - Are there any vendors to avoid or ones that are particularly good?
> >
> > - What performance or reliability implications exist when using SANs?
> >
> > - Are there any killer features with SANs compared to local storage?
> >
> > Any other comments are certainly welcome.
> >
> > Peter
> >
>
> Peter,
>
> The key is to understand your usage patterns, both I/O and query.
> SANs can be easily bandwidth limited which can tank your database
> performance. There have been several threads in the mailing list
> about performance problems caused by the use of a SAN for storage.

It's critical that you set up the SAN with a database in mind otherwise the performance will be bad. I tested a DB on a SAN designed to maximize storage space and performance was terrible. I never had the time or resources to reconfigure the SAN to test a more suitable spindle setup since the SAN was in heavy production use for file archiving.

Alex

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