4 core Opteron performance

[Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC]

On Oct 21, 2006, at 2:29 AM, ke han wrote:

> I realize this is a bit open-ended.  But I need some advice anyway  
> as I need to make a final decision on using FreeBSD 6.1 on a  
> production server.
> I have a new Sun x4100 server.  2 x dual core Opterons with 8 GB  
> RAM.  I need to run MySQL 5, a single threaded HTTP server, and a  
> few other single threaded daemons.
> This server will have lots of long living sockets for one of the  
> single threaded servers.  Other than that, its not outside normal  
> usage bounds.
> I would like feedback on overall performance from anyone who has  
> used FreeBSD 6.1 with hardware similar to this.  I'm not a guy who  
> cares about getting the last 10% of performance out of a server.  I  
> am happy to trade performance for maintainability and a little  
> peace of mind.

I have a dual opteron 2.0ghz (not dual core) with 4GB ram running  
6.1.  It ran a very busy mysql 4 server (feeding three other  
dedicated apache server machines), plus it runs a few FrontBase  
databases that are not so busy (low -- med low usage), and about 30  
instances of apache (ie, min of 30 jails, each running their own  
apache) and a couple of jails with roxen serving webpages, plus a  
bind daemon, a moderately busy exim mta, courier imap and pop  
daemons, and some other assorted stuff, like a bunch of java based  
WebObjects instance and some db stuff (like some low use mysql 4/5  
etc).  It rarely broke much of a heavy sweat in normal usage.  The  
super busy mysql 4 server is now gone and the machine rarely even  
sweats at all now (all the rest is still there).

I would google on x4100 and FreeBSD or search the archives for any  
machine-specific issues.  I kind of remember some issues with some  
sort of Sun servers.

best
Chad

>
> btw, I'm not tried to start another "FreeBSD has poor SMP" flame-fest.
>
> any thoughts?
>  thanks, ke han

---
Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC
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chad at shire.net