From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Dec 9 01:45:57 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 47D2028D for ; Sun, 9 Dec 2012 01:45:57 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from dieterbsd@engineer.com) Received: from mailout-us.gmx.com (mailout-us.gmx.com [74.208.5.67]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id DB3A08FC15 for ; Sun, 9 Dec 2012 01:45:56 +0000 (UTC) Received: (qmail 16547 invoked by uid 0); 9 Dec 2012 01:45:50 -0000 Received: from 67.206.183.28 by rms-us001 with HTTP Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Date: Sat, 08 Dec 2012 20:45:46 -0500 From: "Dieter BSD" Message-ID: <20121209014547.238070@gmx.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: FreeBSD for serious performance? (was: Re: 9.x -- New Install -- serious partition misalignment) To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Authenticated: #74169980 X-Flags: 0001 X-Mailer: GMX.com Web Mailer x-registered: 0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-GMX-UID: HIixcJs93zOlNR3dAHAh06F+IGRvb0B2 X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 09 Dec 2012 01:45:57 -0000 Ronald writes: > This probably wouldn't be such a big deal if we were just talking about > Linux.  But FreeBSD has always prided itself on being a serious OS for > serious people with serious work to do... like major server farms and > such.  In the context of high-end applications on high-end hardware where > people are often trying to squeeze out that last drop of performance, Linux is certainly a steaming pile of crap. BSD is orders of magnitude better, but hey, that doesn't take much. But don't brag about high-end hardware.  But FreeBSD has dropped support for even semi-high-end hardware (DEC Alpha). So I'm stuck running it on AMD64. Nothing against AMD, they did what they could to try and make a silk purse (amd64) out of a sow's ear (x86). But even getting what passes for a high quality board in amd64/x86 land with good reviews doesn't compare. The firmware is absolute crap, and it's not like it is something you can ignore. BTW, real high end hardware is redundant, better than mil-spec, and provides better than 5-9s uptime. Been there, done that. Several chips/features aren't supported properly. PRs sit for years on end. > Performance has been degraded by a whopping 75% ! Having a 4KiB misalignment is nothing compared with not having NCQ support. (Which even linux has, btw.) 25% performance would be a massive upgrade. Or even worse, having the disk driver go into an infinite loop with interrupts blocked, so *nothing* happens and all your incoming data is lost until you manually intervene. Speaking of alignment, I still get "partition 1 does not end on a track boundary" messages. FreeBSD has no clue where the track boundaries are and neither do I. Disks have used varying numbers of sectors/track for longer than FreeBSD has existed. This is your idea of serious?