From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Jan 21 22:20:59 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 907D316A4CF for ; Fri, 21 Jan 2005 22:20:59 +0000 (GMT) Received: from rproxy.gmail.com (rproxy.gmail.com [64.233.170.194]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0FC9E43D46 for ; Fri, 21 Jan 2005 22:20:59 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from linicks@gmail.com) Received: by rproxy.gmail.com with SMTP id 40so174894rnz for ; Fri, 21 Jan 2005 14:20:58 -0800 (PST) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:reply-to:to:subject:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding; b=mub1xvSja0WjGDOHSobZqRJLX9djE6VzJB9LapsTEq//V/Y9f/5Uc6+ps5LxrKAYHTLdqkELfCGHxs4TFpsws2dokBcqT7wuh20XJBRWkRPkaO0fcajFbTDVhyUmL4TBv6p4Z4PS456fUr4SxXFnSQnF20kwF1h+Um1QQGY6owI= Received: by 10.38.8.49 with SMTP id 49mr388905rnh; Fri, 21 Jan 2005 14:20:58 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.38.8.43 with HTTP; Fri, 21 Jan 2005 14:20:58 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2005 15:20:58 -0700 From: Nick Pavlica To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: FreeBSD 5.3 I/O Performance / Linux 2.6.10 X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list Reply-To: Nick Pavlica List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2005 22:20:59 -0000 All, I have been evaluating operating systems/filesystems for an upcoming web application service. Like most "web applications", it will rely heavily on the database and disk I/O. We have decided to use Postgresql for our database needs, but haven't finalized our OS choice. I have been testing the I/O performance of FreeBSD 5.3 and Fedora C3(XFS,EXT3). To be sure that I was using up to date versions of each OS I performed a cvsup and rebuilt the kernel (GENERIC) during the FBSD setup, and a yum update on the Linux install. Being fairly new to FreeBSD I was testing it as a matter of due diligence, however after using it for a few days it really started to grow on me. I was generally impressed with my overall experiance. However, after performing a number of I/O and Postgresql tests on different equipment, the performance proved to be considerably faster when using Fedora. Fedora with XFS was the clear performance winner in every test, followed by Fedora with EXT3, then FreeBSD. I was surprised to find such a dramatic difference between Fedora with XFS and FreeBSD. In almost every test Fedora(XFS) was dramatically faster performing the exact same operations on the same hardware. My best guess, is that FreeBSD 5.3 + updates is still in need of some performance tuning. Are there any good reasons for such a difference. Your thoughts are appreciated. Thanks! --Nick Pavlica