It was a toss-up between that and a Lenovo model that I don't recall the exact name of. Either would have been fine. Maybe the Lenovo had a better keyboard but that's very subjective.

Mine is a Nitro AN515-55. I added RAM and an extra NVMe drive. Reused a 1TB SSD I had spare for the third drive slot.

A chairde - Morning all!

@PaulWhite Good to know! It's a gamer's machine that appears to have concentrated on the good stuff (CPU, RAM, disks) and not worried too much about screen, video (not that it's shabby) or keyboard. I can use a USB keyboard - HDMI to another screen if I have to, but I have no interest in gaming.

I like the idea of 3 SSDs though: OS on one, database on another and WAL on the 3rd. It also [has]( acer.com/ac/en/US/content/model/NH.QESAA.001) USB 3.2 Gen 2 (up to 10 Gbp and a Thunderbolt port (whatever that is - up to 40GBs) - I'm thinking 4th external drive... greedy, I know :-).

How would you set up a db machine with that spec? I have two 4th gen SSDs (ordered the SSDs - with the machine) + a SATA, 64GB RAM (ordered). I want to make it dual boot I have a feeling that this'll be my goto machine for while!

@Vérace-getVACCINATEDNOW I don't think it really matters too much. I have the OS and program files on one NVMe drive and all the database files on the second one. The third (SSD) drive is for archive stuff and things that don't need best perf. The SSD is very decent, but it's no match for the NVMe drives (and they're nothing special).

If I were to split up my OS/db/WAL - which would you put on the slower SATA SSD? I'm interested in doing it anyway even if it's not optimal - I want to gain experience with partitioning and mounting different file systems. God, it's great - being able to talk about "slower" SSDs... probably exceeds the bandwidth of many a server of 20 years ago...

Morning

@Vérace-getVACCINATEDNOW The log

@PaulWhite Thanks for getting back to me - could you point to any URLs/whatever that give you reason to propose that the logs go onto the "slower" drive?

That's tempdb in SQL Server?

No tempdb is scratch space with its own data + log.

Log is WAL per database in SQL Server

@Vérace-getVACCINATEDNOW Well of course it depends on what you plan to do, but I would imagine the sequential write I/O capability of the slower SSD is more than enough. The sort of work I do means I normally want the best possible data/index read/write speeds and log isn't normally a bottleneck for me.

I'm the wrong person to ask though because I don't think it's worth separating for locally-attached fast storage anyway.

Sorry, tempdb is UNDO, WAL is REDO! Yes, it's clear now - the WAL is just fired onto disk "willy-nilly" in a linear/sequential way - no random I/O!

@Vérace-getVACCINATEDNOW No tempdb is space for temporary objects, sorts/hashes that don't fit in memory, that sort of thing. Both undo and redo are part of WAL and are written to the log.

@PaulWhite I appreciate what you're saying - if you had an array of 72 NVMe SSDs, that you could configure with RAID 10, you might take a different approach?

@Vérace-getVACCINATEDNOW Locally attached? Probably not, no. The extra complexity isn't typically worth it.

I meant as a SAN/NAS setup - then it is worth taking the time and effort to separate concerns!

You'd have to have something pretty fancy to support that many drives so adapter/controller throughput and processing power would come into it.

SANs are always terrible.

We're talking full server setup here!

Well you are. I'm talking about a consumer laptop.

I've seen some horrible things. Millions of dollars spent on flash SANs that perform less well than a single local SSD. People always forget something, typically the network.

For a perf-critical expensive server setup you'd want to speak to a professional.

Often a different person at each layer.

@PaulWhite Thanks again for your input on this. I did say: I want to gain experience with partitioning and mounting - I'm not planning on running the country's Revenue system from my laptop - this is all POC and experimenting - not a serious bid to build a server - I'm simulating a server setup - different mount points and/or file systems for different file types - which can be/is done.

All the same, I don't want it to crawl if I'm running a benchmark, so I was just wondering which drive (under the circumstances) it would be better to run off - your input about WAL makes great sense - it brought back this article. Great stuff!

twitter.com/dbfiddleuk/status/1466022575411236864

> Trusted extensions can now be installed inside a fiddle for pg13+

MySQL did not have CTEs, and people complained.

heh

Now has the "Staff" label

do the staff the stiff stuff?

Aaron doesn't even have a gold badge in postgresql

Too bad it's a broke ass company, they could have hired @ypercubeᵀᴹ instead. =P

@EvanCarroll Or even better, you!

I just want Jeff Atwood's OLD Yahct.

It's probably in a closet somewhere.

Got to be a company perk of some kind.

@EvanCarroll- running bms on up_down... at the minute. I hope to have a definitive answer this evening - or tomorrow evening at the latest! I'd like to follow your trail-blazing lead and write a C function to do the last $ character in the string problem. Then can I call myself Vérace THE GREAT!?

@PaulWhite Good news - I just installed pgcrypto - pity I can't figure out how the f*7*! it works! :-)

@McNets They've stiffed mods in the past...

And staff IIRC?

@Vérace-getVACCINATEDNOW glad to know I inspired C answers on dba.stackexchange.com.

Let's make the c FLOURISH

Answering every question with a C extension.

@EvanCarroll To the tune of a Beatles' song: Let it C, let it C..., let it C, Oh let it C..., there will be an ANSWER, let it C, Oh let it C...

Sorry all - cabin fever setting in - or is it the omicron variant?

@EvanCarroll To whom is the remark addressed? It's disappeared anyway (quelle surprise)...

@Vérace-getVACCINATEDNOW mods hate fun. anyway read that answer.

he wrote pseudocode with GOTO

I think that's trolling, right? @PaulWhite?

@EvanCarroll