At 03:30 AM 20-04-02 +0000, you wrote:

>Hi all
>
>About half a month ago I already posted a similar question.
>Suprisingly I didn't get a lot of response although I expected it to
>be a question of broader interest/experience. Now I give it another try.

I didn't see your previous posting but I guess I would have had the same
kind of reaction - that most of us are working with h/w configurations that
suit our own peculiar requirements and wouldn't be in a position to provide
comparisons of "powerfulness". At the end of the day, what the end-users
find most usable is the best...

Some notes/comments, though, before I hand over to others who might be
capable of giving you comparisons.

>I'm curious to know what kind of configuration gets the most powerfull
>Firebird installation.

First off, any configuration that has a dedicated machine for a Firebird
host will be high in the performance stakes. DBMS's don't like to share
CPU and resources with other applications - especially web servers.

Another consideration is that Windows-based Firebird servers can't
utilize multiple processors properly, thanks to implementation faults in
the OS. On SMP machines you have set the CPU affinity to a single
processor unit. So one big powerful CPU has to be preferred if you must
host the db server on Win.

Where you put the power will be affected by your architecture - for
example, in a multi-tier setup, you would want to spread the application
server layer and the database backend across two hosts.

>Are there significant differents within the
>operting systems supported by Firebird (WIN/LINUX/SOLARIS...)?

Linux is generally recognised as a more stable server platform than any of
the Windows ones. Someone else will need to comment about Solaris (though
I read somewhere that Sun have stopped developing Solaris, in favour of
their own proprietary Linux...)

> Which is the most powerfull hardware nowaddays available? What's most
>beneficially from server hardware configuration point of view (disk?
>memory?,???).

Can't comment...but to say "plenty of fast disk". Others can give details
of what's hot for your requirements.

Network bandwidth is of high importance, of course.

Sorry not to be much help with facts and figures - perhaps it will kick off
the thread, though...

cheers,
Helen

All for Open and Open for All
Firebird Open SQL Database · http://firebirdsql.org ·
http://users.tpg.com.au/helebor/
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