Currently I have a dedicated server running a PostgreSQL database which is working out quite well with the following specs:
Xeon E3-1270
16 GB DDR3
2x 2 TB SATA II, 7,200 rpm
dedicated 1 Gbit/s port
and was wondering how this would compare to:
4096MB VPS RAM
60GB SSD Disk Space
8TB Bandwidth
Would the VPS RAM slow down the processing much?
Would the SSD make a dramatic increase in performance to compensate the VPS RAM?
Currently there is not much load on the server - 30 users - accessing an 8GB data file. However the number of users (and data size) may double within the year.
Any thoughts?
Databases like fast data access. Also VPS providers tend to use large RAID arrays so the SSD’s are well protected and fast. Your biggest risk with the dedicated server is those hard drives going out.
Performance wise it’s difficult to say. Database optimizations and indexes are likely to make the most difference.
Subscribe to the PostgreSQL-performance mailing list (http://www.postgresql.org/list/pgsql-performance/) and ask there. I see this sort of question lots there.
This is probably the most important area to look at. In any case 30 or even 60 users isn’t a huge number. If it’s working “quite well,” do you really need to upgrade it? I’m a great believer in “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
As for SSDs, there’s an interesting article about them here .
Does my 16GB of dedicated RAM make much of a difference compared to 4GB of VPS RAM?
Because the SSD server is shared but the HDD server is not, does the difference in speed between SSD and HDD about equal out, or does the SSD have a distinct advantage?