Performance Problems.. Server hardware smoked by $500 box?

[Robert Watson]

On Thu, 11 Sep 2003, John Straiton wrote:

> (Production WEB now that it's using apache2. Since we're new to apache2,
> it's gonna be certainly hokie)

My understanding is that Apache2 is optimized to make extensive use of
threads.  On FreeBSD 5.x, the pthreads implementation (libkse) is
substantially better than in 4.x, especially in SMP environments.  In
FreeBSD 4.x, I'm generally suggesting to people that they use Apach1
unless there are specific feature requirements that make Apache2 the only
choice.  On FreeBSD 5.x, I haven't really evaluated Apache2 behavior, but
it could well come down to the threading issue, and may well be a lot
faster than Apache1 when linked against the right threading library.

This is all speculation of course, but it could be that differences in
Apache version make up most of the performance difference you see.

Robert N M Watson             FreeBSD Core Team, TrustedBSD Projects
robert at fledge.watson.org      Network Associates Laboratories