From owner-freebsd-stable Sat Jul 7 18:29:43 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from bitbucket.extern.uniface.nl (bitbucket.extern.uniface.nl [193.78.88.139]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3E5F537B403 for ; Sat, 7 Jul 2001 18:29:35 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from driehuis@playbeing.org) Received: from bh2.nl.compuware.com (unknown [172.16.17.82]) by bitbucket.extern.uniface.nl (Postfix) with ESMTP id EC03A828A; Sun, 8 Jul 2001 03:29:32 +0200 (CEST) Received: from trashcan.nl.compuware.com ([172.16.16.52]) by bh2.nl.compuware.com with SMTP (Microsoft Exchange Internet Mail Service Version 5.5.2650.21) id 3BVTYGS1; Sun, 8 Jul 2001 03:29:32 +0200 Received: from c1111.nl.compuware.com (c1111.nl.compuware.com [172.16.16.36]) by trashcan.nl.compuware.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9261D145A4; Sun, 8 Jul 2001 03:29:32 +0200 (CEST) Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 03:29:32 +0200 (CEST) From: Bert Driehuis X-Sender: bertd@c1111.nl.compuware.com To: "J.Goodleaf" Cc: stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Benchmarks from SysAdmin mag In-Reply-To: <20010708012209.E37CE5C69@clyde.goodleaf.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Sun, 8 Jul 2001, J.Goodleaf wrote: > I lack the technical expertise to judge this article fully. Any thoughts? > FreeBSD comes out at the bottom, _below_ Win2K. > > http://www.samag.com/articles/2001/0107/0107a/0107a.htm From the article: "If disk I/O occupies a significant run-time portion of your application, your disk I/O tasks will run up to 10x faster on Linux and Windows 2000, when compared to Solaris, or 6x faster than FreeBSD." Knowing that e-mail is the app under measurement, it is worth pointing out that the article mentions that file systems make a hell of a difference, but is silent about tweaking the file system, and why some filesystems are slower than others. If you don't enable softupdates on FreeBSD, mail delivery takes a significant hit. Conversely, Linux's EXT2 file system may be fast, but it is not robust with respect to file system integrity, so running a heavily loaded mail server will result in loss of mail if the server crashes. The article doesn't mention if they checked the disk was properly configured either. If SCSI tagging is not used, performance will suffer too. Etcetera, etcetera. Maybe the authors have done some homework in this area, but if they did, the article doesn't show it. I hate these quicky consumer tests. I remember, too vididly, that a Dutch consumer rag once concluded that a Mac was an order of magnitude slower than a contemporary PC because MS Word ran slow on it. Turned out they ran Windows under VirtualPC on that Mac... Cheers, -- Bert -- Bert Driehuis -- driehuis@playbeing.org -- +31-20-3116119 If the only tool you've got is an axe, every problem looks like fun! To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message