[Chester LUG] A few bits and pieces

[Andrew Williams]

Being a BI myself, hopefully I can put some good input in :)

On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 10:25:42AM +0100, Stuart Burns wrote:
> At work we do a lot of GIS reporting (creating reports based on 3d maps) Now
> I was just speaking to the guy who runs these reports (They get a dozen a
> week to run or so, depending on what is happening) can't cope.
> 
> Until now they have been running on a core duo laptop with 1 GB of ram. I
> kid you not. Each report takes 48 hours. I suggested they get a super
> machine ;)
> 
> The data set (40 GB) comes from a SAN.

Thats a massive dataset for a single report, does it use the whole set 
or just a subset?
 
> Can anyone suggest a high end rig (Money more or less no object) Put simply
> each 10% quicker it can go, it could save up to two weeks of peddle to metal
> computing per year.
> 
> I was thinking along the lines of a top of the line AMD (This program can do
> 64 bit computing but doesn't do multiple cpus that efficiently)
> 
> Around 24 GB RAM
> 2 * 15K SATA 500 GB in a raid stripe config.
> 1 GB NIC as the data comes from a fibre
> bonded FC4 Fibre cards.
> 1 GB Dual head video card with onboard acceleration.

I suspect that 90% of runtime will be grabbing data from that large set, 
I think you should look at dual 1 GB NICs, that is if your network 
infrastructure supports it. 

I guess it depends on the app and how it actually handles the data, but 
wads of RAM and CPU time will help it along, I think Core Duos will give 
you more bang per CPU, if the app has multicpu issues then you want a 
processer that can really hammer the calculations on a single core. 


-- 
Andrew Williams
w: http://tensixtyone.com/
e: andy at tensixtyone.com
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