Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1999 10:54:37 -0700 (PDT) From: Doug <Doug@gorean.org> To: Karl Denninger <karl@Denninger.Net> Cc: Mark Newton <newton@internode.com.au>, green@unixhelp.org, drosih@rpi.edu, grog@lemis.com, mike@smith.net.au, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Microsoft performance (was: ...) Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9906241037570.17227-100000@dt054n86.san.rr.com> In-Reply-To: <19990624095801.A7559@Denninger.Net>
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On Thu, 24 Jun 1999, Karl Denninger wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 24, 1999 at 01:23:19PM +0930, Mark Newton wrote:
> > Karl Denninger wrote:
> >
> > > I've found FreeBSD to outperform NT-anything in any task you throw at the
> > > machine from web service to Samba for file and print service for PCs
> > > running Windows.
> >
> > Granted. Perhaps we're seeing an artifact of NT's developers focussing
> > on optimizing their system for good benchmark performance rather than
> > good real-world performance.
> >
> > 'twill be interesting to see the offical report to find out where the
> > various strengths and weaknesses really are.
> >
> > - mark
>
> Yes.
>
> One place where we *ARE* weak is N-way (more than 2-way) SMP systems. I'm
> not at all sure why this happens, but I suspect that a big part of it is
> concurrency issues within the kernel and filesystem.
>
> BUT - for most REAL applications that configuration is a lose. For example,
> for a big web server I'd prefer 4 boxes and 4 IP addresses (round-robin)
> than one big box with a 4-way SMP system. Why? Because I get both better
> performance that way AND redundancy - if one box fails, I still have
> three more, all of which are working. If one box fails in a 4-way
> SMP configuration I have nothing at all.
We're adding some machines at work for (essentially) cgi
processing only. It was never considered to use anything less than 2 cpu
boxes, and the current round of testing is going so well that we're
seriously considering 4 cpu boxes because they are not that much more
expensive and our processing is highly CPU bound. I agree that redundancy
is a good thing, but at some point the increased network latency exceends
the point of diminishing returns for the redundancy factor.
In short, increasing SMP efficiency should really be a priority
for N>2 systems.
> I had an NT machine that ran file and print service for my office (before
> I sold the company). I replaced it with SAMBA on the same hardware.
>
> Performance more than doubled, and the ONLY thing that I changed was the
> operating system.
Originally we were going to go with linux exclusively on this
project, both because that's the only Intel unix my co-workers were
familiar with, and based on recommendation from our proprietary CGI
vendor. After weeks of soft soap I convinced my boss to use freebsd on one
of the two boxes. Linux kicked our ass on the benchmarks for this program,
mostly do to the "optimized idle loop" that was discussed here a couple of
weeks ago. They beat us by 35% on the disk access/database tests, but I
was able to get that down to only a 15% advantage if I went async.
Fortunately my boss wasn't concerned about this test because the box is
going to do 99% of its disk access over NFS, but...
I told my boss (and he agreed completely) that benchmarks are not
the same as real performance, so I was hoping to impress him with
freebsd's stability and better performance in the real world application.
And to a certain extent, I have, since when my box is running it's load
average is consistently less than 1 while the linux box' load average is
consistently over 5 with exactly the same number of requests. So, points
for me on performance. However notice I said, "when my box is running." So
far it's fallen down on NFS issues so many times that it's currently
sidelined. The Linux box has been running for almost a week, and is
currently handling the load for my box too. My boss has been patient, but
he made the comment the other day that "so far freebsd is way ahead on the
hassle factor" so I'm not sure that my part of the experiment is going to
last much longer.
Now if we were talking about a uni-processor system doing nothing
but serving web pages from local disk, I know I'd be kicking some serious
ass, but that model isn't the real world anymore. Especially as Network
Appliance boxes become more and more common (and they will be, fast and
furious) multi-processor and NFS are for all practical purposes already
the reality now, and will only be more so in the future.
Doug
--
On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only
nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter
what it does.
-- Will Rogers
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