On Thu, Jun 24, 1999 at 01:23:19PM +0930, Mark Newton wrote:
> Karl Denninger wrote:
>
> > I've found FreeBSD to outperform NT-anything in any task you throw at the
> > machine from web service to Samba for file and print service for PCs
> > running Windows.
>
> Granted. Perhaps we're seeing an artifact of NT's developers focussing
> on optimizing their system for good benchmark performance rather than
> good real-world performance.
>
> 'twill be interesting to see the offical report to find out where the
> various strengths and weaknesses really are.
>
> - mark
Yes.
One place where we *ARE* weak is N-way (more than 2-way) SMP systems. I'm
not at all sure why this happens, but I suspect that a big part of it is
concurrency issues within the kernel and filesystem.
BUT - for most REAL applications that configuration is a lose. For example,
for a big web server I'd prefer 4 boxes and 4 IP addresses (round-robin)
than one big box with a 4-way SMP system. Why? Because I get both better
performance that way AND redundancy - if one box fails, I still have
three more, all of which are working. If one box fails in a 4-way
SMP configuration I have nothing at all.
Now there ARE monolithic applications that don't take well to that kind of
scaling - big DBMS servers, for example. But DBMS servers are typically
I/O bound anyway, not CPU bound (there are exceptions, yes, but the general
rule is that they are RAM and disk bound).
I had an NT machine that ran file and print service for my office (before
I sold the company). I replaced it with SAMBA on the same hardware.
Performance more than doubled, and the ONLY thing that I changed was the
operating system.
That's but one real-world example out of many.
--
--
Karl Denninger ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Web: fathers.denninger.net
I ain't even *authorized* to speak for anyone other than myself, so give
up now on trying to associate my words with any particular organization.
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