Deploying PostgreSQL on virtualized hardware
In a couple months, I'm going to be considering how best to deploy an
application I have that uses PostgreSQL as its back-end. It also makes
heavy use of Perl under mod_perl and UMN MapServer with a sprinkling of
PostGIS.
I've recently become intrigued by the idea of virtualized servers [0]eg. http://www.gandi.net/hebergement/offre/xen/,
but I don't know anyone who uses them, so I thought I'd ask the list if
any of you have tried deploying PostgreSQL or any other disk-heavy
software on them?
I'm not familiar with how the virtualized disks are arranged, how
volatile the memory is, and so forth. And, unfortunately, the
advertising folk don't seem to be very keen on divulging the technical
details.
It would certainly be nice to pay $60 per month for eight virtualization
slots and scale up from there as the service grows, rather than buying
$10,000 worth of servers when they won't be even close to fully utilized
for a several months.
Any thoughts?
Thanks.
Colin
I've been running PostgreSQL on a virtual server for
several years now. I'm using VMWare with a Windows
host and Linux guest. I've configured it to let Linux
use a raw partition as a disk. Before I used a
separate partition, the virtual disk had been a
Windows file. Using the disk partition increased
performance, but I don't recall now exactly how much.
This is a small setup with a handful of users.
The database contains only dozens of tables,
but some have ~8 million rows. I've allocated
1Mb of RAM to the virtual machine.
Hope this helps.
Show quoted text
In a couple months, I'm going to be considering how best to deploy an
application I have that uses PostgreSQL as its back-end. It also makes
heavy use of Perl under mod_perl and UMN MapServer with a sprinkling of
PostGIS.
Import Notes
Resolved by subject fallback
TJ O'Donnell wrote:
I've been running PostgreSQL on a virtual server for several years
now. I'm using VMWare with a Windows host and Linux guest. I've
configured it to let Linux use a raw partition as a disk. Before I
used a separate partition, the virtual disk had been a Windows
file. Using the disk partition increased performance, but I don't
recall now exactly how much. This is a small setup with a handful
of users. The database contains only dozens of tables, but some
have ~8 million rows. I've allocated 1Mb of RAM to the virtual
machine.
TJ,
Thanks for your input. I was asking more about hosted elastic
servers, like those provided by the Xen hypervisor, though.
(BTW, how did this end up on the SQL list? I'm going to put it back
on the general list. :) )
Colin