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Date:      Wed, 23 May 2001 16:47:56 EDT
From:      Bsdguru@aol.com
To:        hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: technical comparison
Message-ID:  <84.1653a8bf.283d7bfc@aol.com>

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Tell them to fire 20K packets/second at the linux box and watch it crumble. 
Linux has lots of little kludges to make it appear faster on some benchmarks, 
but from a networking standpoint it cant handle significant network loads.

Bryan

> >         Hi,
>  >
>  >         I appoligize if this is the improper channel for this sort of
>  >discussion, but it is in the best interests of the FreeBSD following,
>  >atleast, within my orginization.
>  >
>  >         I work in an environment consisting of 300+ systems, all FreeBSD
>  >and Solaris, along with lots of EMC and F5 stuff. Our engineering division
>  >has been working on a dynamic content server and search engine for the
>  >past 2.5 years. They have consistently not met up to performance and
>  >throughput requirements and have always blamed our use of FreeBSD for it.
>  >We have humored them time and time again; i.e. they once claimed the lack
>  >of some sort of RAID was keeping them from meeting their requirements,
>  >when he had already thrown brute amounts of hardware at their application.
>  >When we setup a load-testing environment with multiple types of RAIDs, all
>  >the systems, including the one without any sort of RAID performed
>  >identically. And poorly, at that.
>  >
>  >         We have had a recent change in departmental structure, which
>  >unfortunately, weakened the more technical side of the top of the food
>  >chain. They have taken this as another opportunity to push for Linux-use
>  >within our environment. We do not want, nor feel the need for introducing
>  >another OS into the environment.
>  >
>  >         The following are the points that the head of engineering claimed
>  >were their requirements and our shortcoming, which Linux would handle
>  >well:
>  >
>  >---
>  >
>  >a) A machine that has fast character operations
>  >
>  >b) A *supported* Oracle client
>  >
>  >c) A filesystem that will be fast in light of tens of thousands of
>  >    files in a single directory (maybe even hundreds of thousands)
>  >
>  >Requirement a) means that it won't run well on a Sparc processor as
>  >they are notoriously bad at character addressing, and since search
>  >makes extensive use of character operations (as does *any* web
>  >application server for that matter), using a Sparc processor will be a
>  >waste since the x86 architecture (AMD's and Crusoe's especially) do it
>  >much better.
>  >
>  >Requirement b) means it won't be FreeBSD.  Yes, you can run Linux apps
>  >under emulation, but I'd bet dollars for doughnuts that this will be a
>  >support nightmare if we can even get it to work.
>  >
>  >Requirement c) means it won't be Solaris or FreeBSD since neither of
>  >them have a filesystem which handles this effectively.
>  >
>  >Linux on Intel fits the bill because it meets these three requirements
>  >*very* effectively.
>  >
>  >---
>  >
>  >         I find them to be mostly silly points -- (a) touching on integer
>  >math -- pretty moot point given the real meat of this. (b) is wrong, since
>  >there is a native port of the oracle client and (c) is just silly -- I'm
>  >sure softupdates on a modern BSD ufs is loads faster than ext2fs.
>  >
>  >         Folks, please give me some real technical ammo -- reference
>  >internals, give a real technical comparison if possible. I don't believe
>  >this is some lame FreeBSD/Linux comparison -- I'm simply trying to
>  >tactfully and effectively deal with a zealot. :-)
>  >
>  >         Any help would be greatly appreciated.
>  >
>  >         -charles.

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