[postgis-users] Hardware requirements for a server

[Mathieu Basille]

Dear PostGIS users,

I am currently planning to set up a PostGIS instance for my lab. Turns out 
I believe this would be useful for the whole center, so that I'm now 
considering setting up a PostGIS server for everyone—if interest is shared 
of course. At the moment, I am however struggling with what would be 
required in terms of hardware, and of course, the cost will depend on 
that—at the end of the day, it's really a matter of money well spent. I 
have then a series of questions/remarks, and I would welcome any feedback 
from people with existing experience on setting up a multi-user PostGIS server.

* My own experience is rather limited: I used PostGIS quite a bit, but only 
on a desktop, with 2 users. The desktop was quite good (quad-core Xeon, 12 
Go RAM, 500 GB hd), running Debian, and we never had any performance issue 
(although some queries were rather long, but still acceptable).

* The use case I'm envisioning would be (at least in the foreseeable future):
- About 10 faculty users (which means potentially a little bit more 
students using it); I would have hard time considering more than 4 
concurrent users;
- Data would primarily involve a lot (hundreds/thousands) of high 
resolution (spatial and temporal) raster and vector maps, possibly over 
large areas (Florida / USA / continental), as well as potentially millions 
of GPS records (animals individually monitored);
- Queries will primarily involve retrieving points/maps over given 
areas/time, as well as intersecting points over environmental layers; other 
use cases will involve working with steps, i.e. the straight line segment 
connecting two successive locations, and intersecting them with 
environmental layers;

* I couldn't find comprehensive or detailed guidelines on-line about 
hardware, but from what I could see, it seems that memory wouldn't be the 
main issue, but the number of cores would be (one core per database 
connection if I'm not mistaken). At the same time, we want to make sure 
that the experience is smooth for everyone...

* Is there a difference in terms of performance and usability between a 
Linux-based and a MS-based server? My center is unfortunately MS-centered, 
and existing equipment runs with MS systems... It would thus be easier for 
them to set up a MS-based server.

* Does anyone have worked with a server running the DB engine, while the DB 
itself was stored on another box/server? That would likely be the case here 
since we already have a dedicated box for file storage. Along these lines, 
does the system of the file storage box matter (Linux vs. MS)?

* We may also use the server as a workstation to streamline PostGIS 
processing with further R analyses/modeling (or even use R from within the 
database using PL/R). Again, does anyone have experience doing it? Is a 
single workstation the recommended way to work with such workflow? Or would 
it be better (but more costly) to have one server dedicated to PostGIS and 
another one, with different specs, dedicated to analyses (R)?

I realize my questions and comments may be a confusing, likely because of 
the lack of experience about these issues on my side. I really welcome any 
feedback of people working with PostGIS servers in a small unit, or any 
similar setting that could be informative!

In advance, thank you very much!

Sincerely,
Mathieu Basille.


-- 

~$ whoami
Mathieu Basille
http://ase-research.org/basille

~$ locate --details
University of Florida \\
Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center
(+1) 954-577-6314

~$ fortune
« Le tout est de tout dire, et je manque de mots
Et je manque de temps, et je manque d'audace. »
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