Re: Debian/GNU Freebsd (+binary compatablity?)
On Sun, Feb 21, 1999 at 01:16:56AM -0800, Steve Lamb wrote:
> >some possibilities:
>
> > because the cdrom.com people have a much greater level of skill in
> > tuning systems for high performance?
>
> That doesn't say much for Red Hat, then, does it, who makes their
> business on supporting Linux.
their business is selling linux CDs and support. it's not fine-tuning
high-performance network servers.
> > because cdrom.com have better hardware allocated to a
> > mission-critical, continuously-running service than RH allocated to
> > a once-off event at a computer show?
>
> Nope. As I said in my message Red Hat was balancing the load across
> several more powerful systems than what is used on ftp.cdrom.com.
define "more powerful". there's a lot more to sustained throughput and
stability than just CPU Mhz.
I/O speed (i.e. disk, memory, and network card) are much more relevant.
a PPro 200 is still a damn good processor and, for serving ftp or http,
just as good as a PII-400 - I/O is the bottleneck, not CPU speed.
> >because benchmarks don't have much relevance in the real world anyway.
>
> Right. But this is the real world. I'm not talking benchmarks, I'm
> talking about how ftp.cdrom.com, in real world usage, is breaking
> records. Their machine served up 417Gb of data on a single day of
> operation running on a single PPro 200[1]. That is a real world
> statistic, not a benchmark tweak!
>
> It is all fine and dandy to say that Linux' network code is beating
> FreeBSD's but where are the numbers? I work in a free BSD shop and
> they constantly rag on Linux in many ways, and this is one of them.
> They have one good example of FreeBSD's grace under pressure, where is
> Linux' numbers?
buggered if i know, but in my experience i do not trust FreeBSD for
large squid proxy servers - every freebsd based squid box that i have
seen dies under the load. as soon as i reformat them and install debian,
they stop crashing, and they start performing.
now, admittedly, the freebsd boxes i'm talking about weren't built
by the most competent people in the world (although one is or was
moderately active on the fringes of the freebsd core team)...but it's
really not that difficult to get squid running.
OTOH, i have seen FreeBSD boxes do amazing jobs serving web pages -
can't kill 'em with a stick.
anecdotal accounts aren't worth much, though.
BTW, IIRC dejanews is linux based. hunt around on the net, there's
probably more linux boxes running big sites than you'd think.
craig
--
craig sanders
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