Mongo Loves Candy

I recently chatted with some folks about real databases, in RoR, to solve real problems. Not so sure they're interested in real databases, but they're interested in Rails. Along the way, they mentioned that they'd been using Fusion-io SSDs. Be still my heart! Turns out that they've a separate datastore, in MongoDB, which had become as slow as molasses uphill in winter. So they bought a 1T Fusion-io card, in hopes of speeding things up. Didn't work out.

What's not widely understood about PCIe SSDs is that they're, more or less, heavily dependent on the cpu to get the work done. Or, as Zsolt puts it (on today's front page): "how much of the host CPU power is needed to make the SSDs work? - this is important if you're trying to fix an already overloaded production server - because you can't afford to lose performance while you tune the hot spots (even if the theoretical end point of the tuning process is faster)". I suspect they might decide MongoDB is the problem (document datastores make my teeth hurt). SSD with BCNF databases will generate real performance improvements. PCIe cards are not indicated if the problem is cpu bound.

One can find out, well enough anyway, whether the process is cpu or I/O bound with iostat and vmstat on *nix systems. That's the place to start.