From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Dec 5 17:07:14 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7CC2B106564A for ; Fri, 5 Dec 2008 17:07:14 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from fbsd.questions@rachie.is-a-geek.net) Received: from mail.rachie.is-a-geek.net (rachie.is-a-geek.net [66.230.99.27]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4B5698FC1B for ; Fri, 5 Dec 2008 17:07:14 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from fbsd.questions@rachie.is-a-geek.net) Received: from localhost (mail.rachie.is-a-geek.net [192.168.2.101]) by mail.rachie.is-a-geek.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 35516AFBC02; Fri, 5 Dec 2008 08:07:13 -0900 (AKST) From: Mel To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2008 18:07:11 +0100 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.7 References: <0016e64ca7d690e38f045d45227d@google.com> <200812051426.51597.fbsd.questions@rachie.is-a-geek.net> <20081205164537.GD25258@kokopelli.hydra> In-Reply-To: <20081205164537.GD25258@kokopelli.hydra> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-6" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200812051807.11735.fbsd.questions@rachie.is-a-geek.net> Cc: Chad Perrin Subject: Re: Performance benchmarks pitting FreeBSD against Windows X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2008 17:07:14 -0000 On Friday 05 December 2008 17:45:37 Chad Perrin wrote: > On Fri, Dec 05, 2008 at 02:26:50PM +0100, Mel wrote: > > Well, one can find stories like this of course: > > http://www.postgis.org/documentation/casestudies/globexplorer/ > > > > But I'm sure one can find some of the contrary. It does show the value of > > the benchmark: Is it economically viable to use configuration X vs Y, and > > performance is only one factor of the descision. > > Actually, the only other story that comes immediately to mind of a > PostgreSQL vs. Oracle comparison is this one: > > http://www.enterprisedb.com/about/news_events/press_releases/06_27_07.do > > . . . so, in my experience at least, stories to the contrary are pretty > hard to find. > > Of course, that seems to be more about PostgreSQL vs. Oracle than FreeBSD > vs. MS Windows. Point being, that a benchmark should never decide or even help decide to change software accross the board as a policy. You may use it as orientation, but in practice the value of said benchmarks is low as they rarely represent real workloads. The deciding process is migrating one and see what happens, what you have to do to migrate (it's rarely "just the os" and takes man hours) and what the difference in maintenance and periodic costs is. Benchmarks are more useful to "see what kind of hardware I'd need to run a MySQL server with X simultanious connections on FreeBSD" and even better if the tuning and optimizations for the benchmark are documented. -- Mel Problem with today's modular software: they start with the modules and never get to the software part.