Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2001 23:33:44 +0100 (BST) From: Duncan Barclay <dmlb@dmlb.org> To: Matt Dillon <dillon@earth.backplane.com>, freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Cc: mhagerty@voyager.net, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, Albert D.Cahalan <acahalan@cs.uml.edu> Subject: Re: Article: Network performance by OS Message-ID: <XFMail.010616233344.dmlb@computer.my.domain> In-Reply-To: <200106162104.f5GL4dX02015@earth.backplane.com>
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Hi Matt, <follow ups to -chat> On 16-Jun-01 Matt Dillon wrote: > >:> If you intend to push a system to its limits, you damn well better >:> be prepared to tune it properly or you are just wasting your time. >:> On any operating system. You will never find joe-user running his >:> system into the ground with thousands of simultanious connections >:> and ten thousand files in a mail directory, so it's silly to >:> configure the system from a joe-user perspective. >: >:So every FreeBSD server requires an expensive admin to tune it? >:That Win2K solution is looking good now. :-) >: >:These admins now... they never quit their job at just the wrong > > Huh? I'm talking about a reasonably smart 16 year old kid who bothers > to spend a little time learning how a platform works. I don't > know what you are talking about. Expensive sysadmin? Where did that > come from? Any bozo with half a brain who has spent more then a week > playing with FreeBSD in a serious way can tune it better then the idiots > who ran the benchmark. Whilst I agree with your sentiment I would like to bring in the spectre of the "real world". There are many diverse usage models in the world. The "benchmark" under discussion aims to rate various platforms running a package for ISPs. But, I wonder where the majority of FreeBSD/Unix boxes actually live? To take an example - where I work. We are an electronic engineering design consultancy and have a wide mix of projects. The basic IT infrastructure is Windows, a mix of W98, NT4 and W2k with a few Suns for IC design. We have about 200 people on site. The majority of IT support is NOT tuning the machines for best performance (whether it be W2k cross compiling for an embedded system or the Suns for IC design), but just keeping up with people needing a pool machine for a project or customer visit, fixing the switches when they blow up after a power cut, or restoring the Exhange databases...They don't even manage to find the time to recompile a Solaris kernel! Dynamic tuning would be ideal to help our IT get best performance out of NFS and Samba serving project data whilst also running Verilog/VDHL sims on the same box. I guess that this may never get to "best performance" for a given app, and, as such would not want to remove the possibility of tuning. > A person who depends on the ability to run an out-of-the-box solution > into the ground and actually expects it to perform well without having > to know the first thing about the platform he is running his software > on is a complete and utter idiot and the company that employs such a > person has a hellofalot more to worry about then the performance of an > untuned machine. I agree iff the business depends on the solution as its value prop. (e.g. ISP) but, I am sure that there are many more businesses that just use a box as tool to create their value prop. (e.g. an IC vendor). What do we do in those cases? They do not have the staff expertise to tune, to get the best out of the tens of applications that must be run to achieve the overall business goals. As a genuine question, does anyone have an idea of what the split of Suns/HPs /SGIs etc. is between "internet/intranet server" vs. "work station on a desk" is? > -Matt Duncan --- ________________________________________________________________________ Duncan Barclay | God smiles upon the little children, dmlb@dmlb.org | the alcoholics, and the permanently stoned. dmlb@freebsd.org| Steven King To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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