Benchmark (Phoronix): FreeBSD 9.0-RC2 vs. Oracle Linux 6.1 Server

[Randy Schultz]

On Wed, 21 Dec 2011, Tom Evans spaketh thusly:

-}
-}I think that a good SA will at least consider how drives are arranged.
-}We don't just slap ZFS on a single disk and expect magic to happen, we
-}consider how write heavy a system will be and consider a dedicated
-}ZIL, we consider what proportion of files will be re-read and how much
-}application memory will be required and adjust ARC and L2ARC
-}accordingly. Tuning and foresight are important.

I agree whole-heartedly.  I guess I wasn't clear.  I wasn't trying to say most
SA's never tune, only that from watching other SA's over the years, little
tuning is done.  IOW, while certainly some tune and play, I suspect that few
build up a system then try it with and without hyperthreading, test how big the
kern.ipc.shmmax needs to be or if tuning the inflight bits has any effect.  Heh,
I'ld do this all day long if I could.  ;>  I love tweaking and tuning, digging
into docs and seeing if I can eke a little bit more out of the box.  Hmmm, I
wonder if the reason base benchmarks like Phoronix have become important is
because not a lot of SA's spend a lot of time tuning...  Or perhaps they just
use it as a starting point.  <shrug>

However my main point is that saying something needs to be tuned to get more, or
a "proper", speed seems like a slippery slope.  "There's always 1 more thing to
try." (TM)  ;>  

This then bring up the importance of something previously mentioned - what ever
you do, try it yourself in your environment.  Do whatever amount of tuning you
do (or don't do) and try it.  In our environment, fbsd stomps linux for a mail
relay.  OTOH linux's iSCSI initiator stomps fbsd's.  

Heh, what would be really cool even if only from an academic perspective would
be to take a stock install of OS's, benchmark an app, then tune the them to the 
max and re-run the tests to see the difference.  /me eyes the student SA's...  
;>

--
 Randy    (schulra at earlham.edu)      765.983.1283         <*>

nosce te ipsum