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Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems
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To: Ali Chen who wrote (48933)5/12/2002 6:58:19 AM
From: TGPTNDR  Read Replies (2) of 64865
 
Ali, Re: < "Where and when have you seen even 2x performance gain when replacing a piece of hardware?">

You should know that I'm not a hardware guy.

I'm not buying all of the task switch stuff, but I'm buying that some *FANTASTIC* large database performance improvements can be made using big ram.

To the point where we have machines that spend 4 hours initializing their cache && ram drives when we bring up the database(s).

If the ram isn't big enough to hold the whole working set of a query it's got to be written to disk. Once that starts performance ends. System I/O goes to the moon. The local network bogs.(You know all that.)

And once you've bogged the local network *EVERYTHING* slows -- including stuff that's not even logically related.

Including stuff that's on the distributed network not associated with the write.( Frustrated users hitting keys? Unanswered heartbeats? Who knows? )

When you look at the machine(s) all the numbers are near zero except disk I/O for a specific process which is sitting at 100%. *ALL* of the processors on that machine are near zero.

We've had some pretty smart folks working on it. ( CSCO, HWP, ORCL.)

By buying ram you can cut the numbers of times it happens. (And you can verify that the ram made the difference and calculate why.)

By looking at the questions being asked you can physicalize the db to minimize the sets.

By careful design you can maximize the networks.

By policy you can change who can ask questions and when big questions are asked.

In the end, however, the difference between a 2 hour retrieve and a 30(or 1) second one can be the quantity of ram.

And when that happens frequently enough the $ cost is irrelevant.

tgptndr
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