Gabrielle and I are at it again, talking about Filesystem I/O and Linux at the Linux Plumbers Conference.  Mark Wong is the evil performance genius working with us behind the scenes, and a copy of what we brought to the conference today is here.

Takeaway: Set your read ahead buffer size higher in the kernel – maybe even 8MB.

This past weekend, Josh Drake, Mark Wong, & I spent about 12 hours re-organizing the commandprompt colo facility: building new racks, shuffling existing servers, installing new ones, and running new cable. (#31 in Josh Berkus’s ‘50 ways to contribute’ talk: http://www.powerpostgresql.com/download/TFCKUpload/21.x-pdf.)

Commandprompt is hosting the PostgreSQL QA Platform lab (aka “PostgreSQL’s Portland Performance Pad”, aka “The P4 Lab.”) Equipment for this project was donated by HP, Sun, and IBM.

Watch the wiki for updates to the DL380 Tuning Guide: http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/HP_ProLiant_DL380_G5_Tuning_Guide